Sacred Bovine

Sacred Bovine on Hiatus...

2007-03-17T15:53:00.000-04:00

Life has been a little crazy lately. I've been a little overworked and a lot over committed, running around trying to keep a thousand plates spinning and getting annoyed at myself, over and over, when they keep breaking. I've been uncharacteristically (or at least I hope!) flaky lately to many people - messages and emails left unreturned, constantly running late, canceling on plans, and so forth. (Um, sorry to those of you who have been on the other end of this rampant flakiness...)

...and I'm guessing it's going to get worse. On Wednesday, I start a new job that I am incredibly excited about. (Not going to post it here, but email if you're curious). I don't really know what my hours are going to look like, but I have a feeling they are going to be long and unpredictable...especially given how much I care about the work I'm going to be doing. I'm hoping once I settle into a pattern to keep the flakiness to a mimimum of course...but for the next few weeks at least, I can't see it getting much better.

And I'm ready for it. A friend the other day reminded me that when I took my current (soon to be previous!) job, I had said I was looking forward to a slightly more low-key job (at least compared to the campaign insanity before that.) 8:30-5:30, hour for lunch, very little overtime. Time for myself - time to meet people, make friends in Boston, learn the city, add other (non-work) activities to my life. It was good to be reminded of that...sometimes it's nice to realize you've accomplished goals you've already forgot you set. It was a good year, and it was good to take the time for those things...and now I think I'm ready to get back to work (so to speak.)

Which was all a long-winded way of saying I'm putting the blog on semi-hiatus for awhile. I'm not going to stop blogging entirely, but given my dearth of posts during these last few busy weeks and the impending craziness, I doubt I'm going to be as regular a poster as before. We'll see, of course -- there's nothing like madness to get the fingers typing -- but for all, like, five of you who read this regularly, don't be surprised to see much bigger gaps between postings.

Here goes!

Heart Rippage

2007-03-05T21:35:00.000-05:00

I found out tonight that my sister got her financial package from her top choice school. Bastards seem to think she and/or my parents can somehow afford $20,000+ dollars per year...and all I can think is, are they out of their minds? Did they *see* my parents' financial statements? Oh, they are nowhere near destitute, but come on now... and do they really think a kid going to a film program can possibly afford to graduate with almost ninety grand in debt?

Bastards.

As you can tell, I'm a little upset. I think this college financial game they are playing these days -- the one where private colleges seem to want to make themselves affordable only to rich kids -- plain sucks. My sister had her heart set on this school, and she got in with a (albeit small) academic scholarship. She deserves the chance to go and get that education she's been dreaming of.

Okay, I know, lots of kids deserve an educational experience they aren't going to get. Etc etc ad nauseum. But still.

I'm proud of the fact that I put myself through college, and I think my sister will be similarly proud, in the end. Sure, I got jealous when I saw friends or dormmates jet off to China or Guatemala or somewhere similarly exotic for Winter Term, and I resented, just a little, people who could afford to take unpaid internships. I still get angry when I see do-gooder organizing jobs offering a starting pay of $19,000, because the only people who can afford to take a job for that little is someone who doesn't have student loan payments. And lord knows I would love to be a little less in debt.

All told, however, I don't regret my college debt -- and, in fact, I think that independence has been good for me.

But my 30 or so grand in debt is not 90 grand. (Oh, and I feel guilty about that too...I got to go to my dream school, so it seems only fair that she should get to go to hers.) If I have a hard time making ends meet sometimes on my half-way decent PR salary and limited student loans, I have no idea how a film student (or graduate) could possibly strap together the cash to make that high of a monthly loan payment. Basically, she's been screwed.

So I've jumped into hyper-big-sister mode...strategizing ways of negotiating with the Financial Aid department, looking up programs she could apply to late, bugging her to send me her scholarship essays, wondering if I could somehow help spot her the money, trying to dream up a way she could take a year off, have a really fabulous experience somewhere, and somehow find a better, cheaper school in the meantime...and on and on.

I'm a classic oldest child, a distinction I come to better understand more and more each day. Even better, I am that particular variety of older sister that is just enough older than her siblings as to feel personally responsible for their well-being. I'm almost seven years older than my sister and another couple on top of that older than my brother. I didn't grow up playing the same games with them; I grew up babysitting them. We were never childhood playmates (a fact I regret, sometimes; there's a special bond there we'll never have). But they are mine in a way that I think only an older sister can really know. It was my job (self-appointed, perhaps, but my job none the less) to protect them from everything -- from the world, from other kids, even, at times, from getting in too much trouble with Mom & Dad. (There's the distinction from mother & older sister...the older sister runs interference with the parents as much as she does the rest of the world.)

I'm her big sister, and all I want is to make it better...and I'm realizing that the only way I know to make things better is through sheer force of will and a pretty good understanding of how to work the system.

But for all this flailing, I don't think I'm going to be able to make it better this time. I don't know how to protect her from this one. And it just rips my heart out.

Newsflash! Women are Real People!

2007-02-13T21:43:00.000-05:00

This just in from the Globe: Women have sex! Sometimes even (gasp) casual sex!

Not that we would know if they enjoy it, or not, because as the Dig so brilliantly pointed out , the Globe didn't bother to interview a single woman who is taking part in this "new trend" called "hooking up." (We won't even get into the fact that the Globe is about twenty years behind the curve. Reading this article, I felt as though some old woman was asking me "what is this 'hip-hop' that all the young people are listening to these days? )

No, instead they interviewed overly paid shrinks and authors of bullshit books to find out that hooking up "causes young women to be emotionally unhooked from a partner and from themselves" and makes them "pick up a lot of bad habits that makes it hard to sustain a long-term commitment."

No mention, by the way, of the young men all these young women are purportedly hooking up with. (Unless they're all hooking up with each other...but this being the Globe, I highly doubt that). The sexual habits of young men is of no concern to these authors, despite the fact that if girls are having guilt-free sex with partners they barely know, chances are good the guys are also having sex (guilt-free, or not) with partners they also know. (Although I am amused by the ridiculous scenario of women sleeping with men they barely know but who somehow know them very well.)

Of course, we all know that young men are hard-wired for casual sex, while young women are not. (See the scientific reference to oxytocin in the story...we're not sexist, it's scientific!)

So while the Globe thinks that it is breaking news that in our culture "young women take pride in guilt-free sex with partners they rarely know," we all know that if the sentence had read "young men...." it wouldn't have been news at all.

Oh, but it gets better. Because, you see, not only can women not handle sex outside the confines of a relationship (or maybe we can't handle it at all), "the irony is that girls aren't equipped to handle love."

So, to back up for a second, we can't handle sex, and we can't handle love. So, what exactly are we equipped to handle, besides baking and child rearing?

Expert shrink Laura Sessions Stepp goes on to chide us ladies. "Most girls," she says, "say they want to be in love eventually, they want to marry eventually. My question is, 'Will hooking up get you there?'"

I have no idea, Ms. Stepp, if hooking up will get me to love & marriage eventually. I sort of hope said marriage will include a lot of hooking up, preferably before and after those vows are exchanged, but who knows? I do know that, in the meantime, hooking up (casually or not; to each their own) fulfills a few other needs beyond love and marriage that, shockingly enough, women occasionally have.

I've been on a rage against this article all day. (Those of you who received outraged emails and IMs from me forwarding the link should know.) Every time I think of it, I find another reason to get angry.

I'm not even sure what I should be most mad about. Is it the blatant double standard? The outright sexism? The implication that women hooking up with men outside a serious, marriage-bound relationship are all sluts? The assumption that all women are looking for one thing and one thing only...and that is marriage? The fact that the Globe couldn't be bothered to interview a woman or two who has had great experiences with NSA sex... with no messy "emotional entanglements" that she "didn't know how to handle"? The complete denial of the very real sexual desires of many women? The idolization of these two nice young girls who have found themselves boyfriends (and ones who will pay for dinner!!)? The assertion that women who "hook up" are ruining themselves and will be unable to commit to a serious relationship at another date? The implication that all women under, say, thirty, are running around fucking anything that breathes...and that you can make any sort of generalization about "all young women" in the first place? The Globe's complete lack of knowledge or understanding of, for lack of a better term here, "youth culture"? Or just the pure, Puritan sanctimony of it all?

I'd like to kindly suggest that the Globe take the stick out of its ass, take a look at the calendar (it's not 1957, folks), and offer a sincere apology to its readers for the piece of complete and total bullshit they for some stupid reason elected to publish today.

Just a thought. Not that I can be trusted with anything so complicated as thinking.

The Department of Stupid Things to Complain About

2007-02-11T17:35:00.000-05:00

I've been losing weight lately. Nothing major - a pound or two every couple of weeks - but it's been happening pretty steadily for a couple of months now, and my pants are all starting to fall off, and I'm frankly a bit confused.

See, I'm not actually trying to lose weight. Oh, I'm certainly not complaining...and I'm not exactly in danger of becoming unhealthily thin any time soon....but I just don't get it. Losing weight, in my experience and in those of people I've seen try to do it, requires effort. Serious, concentrated, long-lasting effort. Maybe not for those lucky people with great metabolisms, but for people like me who usually gain weight by just looking at a brownie, actually losing weight is hard work. And I haven't been working.

In fact, I have never once been able to lose weight by trying. There have been times in my life when I have counted calories and dutifully gone to the gym three times a week and held off on dessert and all the rest, and not lost a single pound.

Which might explain why I find it so confusing, frustrating, and even upsetting when I go to the gym sporadically at best, eat whatever I feel like eating, and keep getting smaller. I've got one question for my body:

What the fuck?

It's a control issue for me. I like to think that I have control over my body, and that my actions influence how it functions. I can accept the physical consequences of my poor choices, just so long as they actually result from my choices. For example, if I eat poorly and don't get enough sleep and stress myself out, I am not surprised when I get sick. If I drink way too much wine, I am not surprised when I am hung over.

But when I treat myself well but suddenly find myself knocked on my ass with a cold...well, I get annoyed. When I wake up with a splitting headache and vague nausea after just a couple glasses of wine spread out over hours, I get sort of pissed at the grand unfairness of it all. I behaved myself; why can't my body? I don't like it when my body acts like an unpredictable teenager, acting capriciously, flying off the handle at the mildest provocation, not listening to reason. I'm an adult, damn it, and it's about time my body learned to act like it.

So while it's great that my moody, stubborn little body thinks it's fun this year to lose weight without trying, I'm a little worried about the day when it changes its mind and decides it is actually way more fun to watch me eat nothing but carrots and slave away at the gym as my ass gets bigger and bigger.

A little rationality. A little cause-leads-to-effect. Body o' mine, is this really so much to ask ?

Back to the Well

2007-01-30T21:16:00.000-05:00

I've taken a bit of a break from blogging lately. Not really on purpose...it's just a factor of inspiration. I can't write these things unless it's welling up inside me (that old writer's tale about writing for your very survival), and the well has been running fairly dry these days.

Actually, that's not quite true. The well, in fact, is as water-filled as ever -- perhaps more so -- but I feel like I've dropped the bucket. I told a friend the other day that I've been having a hard time lately translating my internal thoughts into external dialogue, and I think that's a pretty apt description. I'm looking for the connecting rope -- and believe me, when I find it, it's all going to come rushing out -- but for now there's no pulling water from this well. (As you'll be able to tell from this post...I've been trying and trying to write a focused, fascinating, topic-driven post for the past week, and all I'm coming up with is the current stream of conscious nonsense.)

My beautiful photographer friend Jessie recently gathered a bunch of us together for a shoot. (I like the sound of that..."I was at a photo shoot." Very artsy-bohemian of me.) We had a lovely time, and that's an understatement. There's no one I know as good as Jessie at making you feel beautiful and photogenic (oh and believe me, I'm not)...like you are a fascinatingly sexy subject for her to train her camera on. She's a talented photographer no doubt, but I secretly (or, at this point, not so secretly ) think that it's her camera-side manner and ability to coax out something unexpectedly gorgeous that is going to truly set her apart from the rest.

She's been subtly (and at times not-so-subtly...love you Jessie!) hinting that the photo shoot would make a great topic for a blog post. I think she's right, but I've been bumping up against that inspiration thing. I write because I have to, because I feel I will just explode if I do not...and as wonderful and memorable as that day was, there was no imminent explosion.

Until she posted a picture from the shoot on her website...from my quasi-topless shoot.

Actually, she posted the picture a week or so ago. She asked me to look at it to make sure I was okay with it being up, and I did check from my very dim computer at work. Looked discrete and tasteful to me. In fact, you could barely see a thing except for my face. Okay by me.

And then tonight, out of curiosity, I decided to check it out from my much-better computer at home.

Yeah, wow, that's my breast.

Which is, you know, cool. It's very artsy. Very tasteful. I feel like a much more exciting person than I probably actually am for having posed semi-topless for my soon-to-be famous photographer friend, and to have that broadcast to the world. And it's not like I didn't spend half my time at college coming up with new and creative ways to wear as little as possible in public (read: Safer Sex Night), anyway.

But I've been toying with the notion of exposure and vulnerability lately. Thinking about what it means to open myself up, flaws and all, and say to the world, "Here I am. Take it or leave it." Thinking about what it means to let people in, and to keep people out. Thinking about what it means to trust others with your vulnerability. Thinking about what it feels like to be exposed. All sorts of esoteric, big-picture ideas, right?

Turns out, there's nothing like a half-naked public picture of yourself to remind you what exposure and vulnerability really feel like.

So anyway, world, here I am. Flaws and all (though Jessie covers them nicely.) Take it or leave it.

Novel-ty

2007-01-17T14:05:00.000-05:00

"The very reason I write is so that I might not sleepwalk through my entire life."
-- Zadie Smith

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about The Perfect Novel. Reading articles lamenting the lack of Great Literary Works being published these days and the paucity of Bright New Young Talent (young, in the literary world, being defined as anyone under 40). Wondering where the Voice of My Generation is, wondering what they would sound like, what they would write about, what they would say. Wondering if there can even be a Voice of My Generation anymore, especially after reading some article somewhere that pointed out that the previous Voices of Generations all tended to be white and male…not at all in vogue in today’s climate of multiculturalism…meaning that the whole concept of a Voice of a Generation may well be bunk to begin with.

Then along comes Zadie Smith, who just wrote an absolutely brilliant article on the act of judging literature, the uneasy relationship between truth and fiction (and between the writer’s truths and the writer’s communication of said truths), and the real reason why there are so few Great Literary Works published in any generation.

It’s a long article, but if you have any interest in literature (or, say, were an English major in college) read it in its entirety. It’s one of the more fascinating and spot-on essays I’ve read in awhile.

Here’s one snippet:

It is impossible to convey all of the truth of all our experience. When we write, similarly, we have the idea of a total revelation of truth, but cannot realize it. And so, instead, each writer asks himself which serviceable truths he can live with, which alliances are strong enough to hold… In what form, asks the writer, can I most truthfully describe the world as it is experienced by this particular self? And it is from that starting point that each writer goes on to make their individual compromise with the self, which is always a compromise with truth as far as the self can know it. That is why the most common feeling, upon re-reading one's own work, is Prufrock's: "That is not it at all ... that is not what I meant, at all ..." Writing feels like self-betrayal, like failure.

It is possible I think this article is so brilliant because it addresses quite directly a few intellectual quandaries I've been having. She sums up it up pretty neatly -- the essential problem of writing something that is real and authentic and true, but is also fiction.

Perhaps I should back up.

I’ve been picking, very casually, very occasionally, at a novel. Ooh, that felt weird to type. It’s not really something I talk about. It’s nowhere near anything yet, and it may well never be. I’m just picking at the edges right now...chiseling a little at the corners, curious as to what shape the marble may hold.

I’ve always assumed I would write a novel someday. (The fact that I have no real experience, or talent for, writing fiction being only a minor obstacle.) I know it in the same way (I think) other people know they will have kids. Not sure when, not sure how (well, they might technically know *how*….), not sure in what way kids will fit into the overall plan…but part of the plan nonetheless. That’s what my novel feels like to me.

It’s inside my skin. There are times I can feel its physical presence inside me…can almost make out its contours. Sometimes, when I’m feeling particularly inspired to write, or when I can’t get certain phrases or ideas out of my head until I write them down, I think of my novel like a splintering bone. I think these phrases are bone spurs, digging their way through to the surface of my skin, and my only job, at the moment, is to pick them out, write them down and hold them for safekeeping. I have files and files of random sentences I’m keeping safe.

I’ve gone through a lot lately that has been inspiring random phrases, paragraphs, or even whole pages. And so I’ve been thinking a lot about writing as the revelation of truths. Writing fiction as an act of figuring out my own, real-world, life…of analyzing its patterns, of making it feel meaningful, of subjecting it to a poetic standard. Like Smith, writing keeps me from sleepwalking through my life. But also like Smith, I wonder which truths I pick. Where is the line between fiction and autobiography? What truths do I – can I – reveal, and what truths do I mix with what lies?

Any introductory creative writing class will tell you to “write what you know.” I want to write something that will ring true, that is an authentic representation of a real experience. And yet I also have a sense that a novel should be a little grander – reach more, aim higher, dream bigger. The stakes need to be higher and the themes bigger than just the tiny experience of one individual. A great novel lifts us up.

And therein lays the problem, as Smith points out. When we write to communicate Big Ideas and Grand Themes, we lose touch with the truths we know. We stop representing a real experience and start representing a clichéd conception of that experience. It’s Baudrillard’s simulacrum (that one’s for you, E.) – we start to think that this clichéd representation of experience is the real thing, and that experiences that do not fit this pattern are inauthentic…when, in fact, they are the most authentic of all because they are real.

Which brings me back to all this Voice of Our Generation stuff…because, of course, that’s the real hidden dream here. To write a novel is one thing, but to write a novel that speaks to the dreams and yearnings and questions and problems of whole generation…well, that's the ultimate, right? But in striving to represent those Great Themes, you risk running afoul of all the Great Clichés that are out there.

Such as, for example, the Great Cliché of the young writer dreaming big about her Great American Novel (which, once published, would propel her instantly into Voice of Her Generation status)... but not actually having a clue what that novel would be about or, for that matter, how to write even halfway decent fiction in the first place. Yep, walked right into that one.

Dance, Magic, Dance

2007-01-08T12:46:00.000-05:00

WFUV out of Fordham (which is, by the way, my new favorite radio station, a permanent desktop fixture in my 8:30 to 5:30 life now that I have some speakers in my office...check it out) is running a David Bowie tribute today. Turns out, Mr. Bowie is the big 6-0.

Which I find incredibly creepy, because David Bowie was my first sexual crush, back before I even knew what sex was. My third-grade self really wanted to do Bowie (not that I knew what wanting to "do" someone would actually entail), and now he's 60. I know I have a penchant for older men, but c'mon...this is a bit ridiculous.

Not that I think I'm the only pre-teenage girl in the world to get the hots for Bowie. Have you seen Labyrinth? David dancing around, swiveling his hips in those skin tight pants, revealing a, well, bulge bigger than one might think possible? Glammed out with make-up and bigger hair, looking oh-so vulnerable and available while cuddling a baby? Still wearing those, um, pants? In fact, I can't recall a single conversation with anyone about that movie (and being one of my all-time favorites, I've had more than a few such conversations) that didn't center on the state of Bowie's lower body. It's so damn obvious, how could you not talk about it?

10 year old me, staring at the TV, trying not to stare at Bowie's package, not even knowing why I wanted to stare at his package but having a vague feeling that I wasn't supposed to (but why, I also wasn't sure), and thus wanting to all the more so. Ah, the lure of the forbidden.

And now Bowie is 60.

And all the third-grader left in me can think is, "ewwwww."

A Wild Yea-Saying Overburst of American Joy

2007-01-03T22:25:00.000-05:00

As a voracious reader and literature-junky, I like to talk about books with people. A lot. I love finding out what others are reading, trading favorite authors, discussing well-loved books. I like to think who I am and how I think and what I do are, in many ways, shaped by what I read. ("I am well-read, therefore I am.")

I just finished a conversation with a good friend about this topic, and I've been mad to blog about it every sense. (The phrasing of being "mad" to do anything being a direct influence from Kerouac, for example.)

I was talking about Erica Jong, one of my favorite writers in a slightly guilty-pleasure sort of way. (Why a female writing about sex, even if it is profound, well-written and moving, should be a "guilty pleasure" is a whole other topic of conversation. Or, if I were more influenced by Ms. Jong, psycho-analysis.)

I went to see Jong speak at the Brookline Booksmith a few months ago, hoping and expecting for some form of transformation and salvation. See, I've been reading her since I was 17, when I first found a battered old copy of "How to Save Your Own Life." In many ways, that book changed my life (more on this later), and I felt a deep need to tell her this when I saw her. (I'm sure she gets that all the time and is, in fact, sick to death of hearing it. Still, I think if someone has changed your life, you ought to tell them if you get a chance, and I was determined to do so.) For a variety of reasons, her attitude and demeanor not being the least of them, this plan was a flop, and I left feeling incredibly disappointed.

But that's a minor side point. What this whole conversation got me thinking about is what books have literally changed my life. Not influenced my thinking, not made me reconsider my position on issues, not thrilled me or made my life more enjoyable. These things are nice, but not the big prize here...I'm talking about books that have very literally caused me to change my actions, to change the way I live my life, to change the course of my destiny.

Being a literature snob, I instantly want to bring up Blake, whose "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell" I thought revolutionary sophomore year of college. I want to bring up Kundera, who made me reconsider my relationship to politics, to power, with sex, with love, with others, through his writings in The Unbearable Lightness of Being. I want to bring up Faulkner, or Hemingway, or Morrison, writers whose collected works I have generally devoured and who I like to think of as pretty damn influential on...well, something in me, since I've read so much of what they've written. I want to bring up Kushner and Albee, whose plays I have read, watched, and worked on for hours and hours and hours, the lines of which I can still quote in my sleep. I want to bring up Kerouac, who (besides injecting the word "mad" into my vocabulary in a new sense) gave me Dean Moriarty and his yea-saying ways -- a constant reminder and inspiration to say yes to whatever life offers. Or Anais Nin, which I'm reading now, and is affecting me in many ways as Jong did when I was a teenager.

But I can't. As much as I've loved these writings, pondered and analyzed these words, and absorbed these concepts into my thinking, I can't honestly claim that any have changed my life.

To my mind, two books have: Erica Jong's How to Save Your Own Life and Rob Sangster's The Traveller's Toolkit. Sort of an embarrassing list, actually, but these are the ones.

I picked up Jong at 17, and I read about sex and relationships in a way I never had before. I think this was one of those second wave feminism books that came out in the 1960's and 70's, words that revolutionized and scandalized readers by talking about female orgasms (gasp!) and sex before marriage (double gasp!) and even multiple partners and lesbian affairs and all the rest (can't-breath-i'm-gasping-so-much). I wasn't terribly scandalized by any of this (well, maybe at the age of 17, I was a little scandalized by the orgies.) But I was intrigued and amazed by Jong's frankness when it came to relationships -- and, in particular, the way sex did and did not relate to love. Perhaps most of all it was her entirely rule-breaking, totally nonjudgmental, experiential-based approach to sex and love that resonated the most with me. I hadn't read Kerouac yet, but Jong was a yea-sayer, too.

I won't get into too many sordid details here, but I will say that I am positive that being exposed to Jong's philosophy of living changed my life.

Book number two I picked up at a used bookstore in Washington DC. (Right next to Eastern Market...and if you are ever there, I highly recommend a visit. The shopkeeper makes a point of insulting everyone that comes into the door...it's really quite a sight to watch. ) They had a great selection of used travel books, and I picked up a whole collection of late 90's Lonely Planet guides to all sorts of cool places in the world. I was planning my Watson fellowship application at the time (for those of you who haven't heard of it, it's a program that allows you to travel around the world working on a special project of your design. Fucking awesome, and I didn't get it. But things work out, regardless.) I had originally been dead set on doing the Europe thing...until I picked up this book by Rob Sangster. It's basically a how-to book for first time travelers, although I would highly recommend it to anyone thinking of planning a long trip, especially to less developed countries, even if they've traveled before.

Sangster made going to third world (sorry to be less than PC, "less developed" is just such an awkward phrase to use) countries seem accessible, doable, and far more fascinating than anything I could see in Europe. He took the fear factor out of it. His book opened me up to the possibility of going to places a little more off the beaten trail...leading me, eventually, to plan a six month backpacking trip all on my own through India, Thailand and Japan. He not only convinced me that I could do it, but that I had to do it.

And his philosophy of travel -- seeking out adventures, traveling cheaply so as to get to know the culture, but not so cheaply that you ended up miserable, being flexible and able to roll with the punches, focusing the trip on meeting people and learning the culture rather than seeing specific sights, not losing sight of the bigger picture whenever the traveling got frustrating and rough, and being a responsible traveler -- became my philosophy of travel. I not only chose my destination and made my trip happen because of what he had to say, but I had a far more enjoyable and successful trip because I had read his book.

So there it is -- sex and travel. The true impact of literature on my life!

I'm still trying to come up with other books that make the cut, but those are what I have thus far. I'd love to hear from others, though...post and tell me what books have truly changed your life. I'm betting it will be a fascinating list.

I'd Like to Vote on Your Marriage

2007-01-02T20:09:00.000-05:00

Sometimes you've got to go with your gut.

I've been agonizing for months over whether or not I thought the Legislature should vote on the gay marriage amendment. (Okay, so agonizing...maybe an overstatement. Even I'm not that obsessive, nerdy, or angsty.) I've been considering it. Going back and forth. Trying to figure out my opinion on the topic.

(I'd like to assume it goes without saying that I absolutely 100% think gay marriage should be legal and, indeed, is a civil right, etc etc etc. I also think the concept of "letting the people vote" on a civil right is absolutely abhorrent, a tyranny of the [potential] majority, and the reason we have things like Bills of Rights. I'd hope that was blatantly obvious to anyone who stumbled across this blog...but in case you're not a regular reader, let me clear that one up right away.)

I also have a great respect for process, and a good liberal loyalty to its sanctity. Ever since Politics 105 (Obies, you know it), I've thought process over product was a pretty sound theory, a method of policymaking that led, in the end, of the overall best product and the best protection of individual rights on the grander scale.

So this legislative vote has been a tough one for me. I thought Sam Allis wrote a great essay on the topic. He calls himself a process liberal, and I think I agree with him. But I also thought
Dan Kennedy got it right when he made an analogy between refusing to vote to put gay marriage on the ballot to refusing to vote to put slavery on the ballot. In other words, I've been all over the place on this issue.

But really, debating whether or not they should of voted isn't the point of this post. (After all, it's been done ad naseum in the Globe, the Herald, and on the blogs (just go check out
Blue Mass Group if you're really not sick of it yet.)

My point is that the second I heard that the legislature had voted to advance the anti-gay marriage amendment, I knew instantly where I stood. I was angry, I was upset, I was swearing in my office. (My co-workers, I'm sure, think I'm insane.) I didn't give a damn that they "upheld the sanctity of the process" or whatever bullshit language I was quoting to friends a few weeks ago. The bastards decided it was okay, actually okay, to vote on whether my friends, me, or anyone else I know can marry someone they love. I don't even care that most of them voted against it. They put it to a vote. They thought it was something they had the right to decide. I've got two words for them -- and for Mr. Senate President in particular -- fuck. off.

Even better, they didn't, in the end, give a whit about the process anyway. They refused to vote on the Health Care Amendment, which faced a similar fate as the Anti-Gay Marriage Amendment. (But I bet you aren't going to hear the editorial staff at the Herald or the leaders of the Vote on Marriage groups complain about that, will you?) Turns out, they (or at least some of them) only cared about the "process" when they were getting a little public scrutiny on the subjects. There was no practically no media attention given to the health care amendment, and, hence, no vote.

Oh, the hypocrisy.

On the other hand, nice to know public outrage counts for something.

There's no "I" in Communicate

2006-12-24T02:05:00.000-05:00

A late night post after hours of drinking...coffee with one of my best friends from high school. (Amazing/funny/wonderful how you fall into old patterns with old friends; we're both well past 21 these days, and yet to go anywhere but Perkins, our old stomping ground, feels a bit, well, sacrilegious.) As a result, it's 2am and my mind is running a million miles a minute. I'd like to keep the thoughts straight and type them in a fairly linear fashion, but I fear tonight I might only achieve general incoherency. We'll see.

(Why I apparently feel the need to preface my blog posts with semi-self conscious comments about what they may or may not be like is a whole other topic.)

I'm thinking about communication tonight. Actually, I think about communication a lot. I like to think I'm even pretty good at it, being a "communications professional" and all. I suppose when it comes to communicating with the general public I'm alright, but lately I'm starting to wonder if I am capable of communicating properly with real, individual people at all.

As it turns out, it doesn't really matter if you are good at expressing your thoughts coherently and engagingly in an email or conversation. Wit, charm, and sincere honesty (all of which I'm sure I posses in abundance...) don't really go far if the person on the other end of the conversation isn't actually catching your true meaning through all the witty, well-worded statements.

Communication is about the exchange of meanings. It's about you understanding what it is I am trying to tell you - exactly what I am trying to tell you -- and I understanding exactly what it is you are trying to tell me. So it's an individualist thing; you're trying to communicate with an individual person, not an anonymous stranger. You may well be "great" at communicating your thoughts and feelings, but if you don't communicate them in such a way that the person on the other end actually gets the meaning you are hoping they get, then it's worthless. And, similarly, you can be the best listener in the world, but if you misread what they are trying to tell you, then what's the point?

I recently uncovered a whole series of misunderstands with a friend based on this simple fact. I misread his meaning, and reacted accordingly. And then he misread my actions, because he didn't know they came from me misreading his meaning. And so on and so forth. We ended up having this drawn out fight -- a bit of a Cold War, really -- just because we kept misreading what the other meant, or felt, or was trying to say.

And while I might think that I was communicating my thoughts and feelings well, or that I was entirely justified in (mis)reading his words a certain way, none of that really matters, because in the end, for all our words, we didn't actually communicate.

What tragedies are built upon simple miscommunication. What hurts created, what wrongs unrighted, what wars started and peace offerings lost. What a tangled mess we weave, without even practicing to deceive. We just deceive ourselves.

So my new resolution - close enough to the New Year to possibly fall into that category, but one I'm trying to practice beginning immediately - is to learn to communicate with a person, rather than an anonymous entity that behaves by certain rules and can be interpreted in easily boxed ways. Individuals, after all, are weird, and quirky, and they don't always behave logically or predictably. And to remember that just because I react a certain way or communicate in a certain fashion, does not mean others will react similarly or have the same communication style as I. To stop worrying about being so damn clever, and start worrying about how I can get my point across, cleverly or not.

I want to exchange real meanings, and not just your typical pretty, witty, banter. I want to learn the real meanings behind the words of others, and not fall into the over-interpretation trap. A little more taking-things-at-face-value (and, while we're at it, a litte more loving-people-for-who-they-are) and a little more giving people the benefit of the doubt. At least until I know for sure what it was they really meant.

It's Not Such a Bad Life

2006-12-13T13:53:00.000-05:00

It's cliched, but true...whenever you start to feel sorry for yourself, life comes along to give you a handful of reasons why you really need to get over it.

"You think you've got it bad?" Life says. "You haven't seen anything."

I recently found out a dear friend from high school is about to lose her father to lung cancer. One day he's healthy, and the next - BOOM - he's got stage three, inoperable lung cancer...and a life expectancy that can be measured in months. Nothing to be done, and almost no time to prepare.

("And you thought you deserved pity because your mother had early - I repeat, early - stage breast cancer and now you've got yourself all in a hubbub about genetic testing and the possibility that you'll likely get it to, blah blah blah" snarls Life. "Get over yourself.")

To make matters worse, she's going through a break-up with her boyfriend...of five years. The guy she thought she was going to marry. The guy, by the way, that her father loved and also hoped she would marry.

("Oh, and you threw yourself a big ol' pity party over your little breakup," says Life with saccharine sweetness. "You poor thing.")

Just heard today about a friend of friend of a friend who was in a car accident over the weekend. Turns out he broke his arm. Wouldn't be such a big deal, but he's a professional musician, and there may be nerve damage. It's possible he'll never play again.

("Still going through that existential crisis about your job and its relationship to your master life plan?" says Life. "How about being thankful for your two healthy typing hands and a brain that's fully functional, at least most of the time?")

My cold shower of reality, taken after that long hot bath of self-pity, is coming at a good time. It's the holidays, after all. There's no better time for a little reflection on all the good things you have...and a little realization of all the good things many other people do not have.

("Man, you think you've got it bad? At least you weren't born in a manger full of smelly animals with no medical attention because some lousy innkeeper wouldn't let your parents have a room.")

The good things I have? A family that loves me and misses me; a sister who apparently, kind of sort of, maybe even looks up to me (who knew?); friends who are always, always there when they're needed, and almost always there when they're just wanted; a job that pays the bills, gives me health care, and allows me to learn and grow, for the most part; a happy household of fabulous roommates who indulged my need for a (bigger!) Christmas tree, listen to me talk about how my day was, care about me when I'm sick, and make yummy baked goods for me to eat; healthy typing hands (even if the rest of me isn't quite so healthy at the moment); a kitchen to cook in and people to cook for; holiday parties to go to; a Pandora radio station full of jazzy christmas songs; free shipping on Amazon.com till the 15th; a flight home to look forward to; a beautiful baby niece to spoil; and every now and then, unexpected love and grace.

(And this is just a partial list.)

It's not such a bad life after all, is it?

You Can Write, But You Can't...Edit

2006-12-01T10:49:00.000-05:00

(The title, by the way, is a lyric from a song on the new Regina Spektor album that I can't stop listening to...and I think it's got to be one of the best snarky comments ever. Well, at least to a nerd like me.)

I know I'm a little more psychotic about grammar than most people. I understand that not everyone is as obsessive about comma placement as I am (comma placement being my absolute biggest pet peeve of all the frequently broken rules of writing in the English language). I try hard (though frequently fail) not to be too terribly judgement of people just because they haven't studied Strunk&White quite as carefully as I have. And I certainly know I'm not perfect. (I'm sure if someone wanted to be terribly obstinate and prickly, he or she could go through this posting and point out all the instances in which I've messed up a rule.)

But I figure if you're going to pay someone to write for you, they ought to at the very least get the basics down.

For example, compound sentences. I think if you're going to pay someone for their writing, they ought to be able to master compound sentences and all the associated rules.

On the T last night, I saw a print MBTA ad that said something along the lines of this:

"Please limit your cell phone usage, loud conversations can be disturbing to others" [sic].

I mean, c'mon. You don't join together two complete sentences with a comma. Use a semi-colon! Or, if that's a little to eccentric for a print ad, break it up into two sentences. Or toss in a "because" and take out the comma altogether. Who did they hire to draft their ad copy?

So, because I am indeed an anal-retentive grump when it comes to punctuation, I figured I would offer the MBTA a gentle suggestion: hire a goddamn proofreader. In fact, I even suggested they consider hiring me.

Dear MBTA,

I wanted to suggest that the MBTA consider hiring a proofreader to double-check your advertisements before you post them. (Or, if you contract with an outside agency, you should really consider finding a new one.)

Last night on the Orange Line I saw an ad that said something along the lines of "Please limit your cell phone usage, loud conversations can be disturbing to others" [sic]. It's grammatically incorrect to join together two complete sentences with a comma. In that case, one would either use a semi-colon or simply break it into two separate sentences.

I hate to sound like an anal-retentive grump here, but I imagine the MBTA pays good tax money to put these ads together, and it seems at the very least they could be proofread. Schoolchildren and people learning English as a second language ride the T every day. Why put ads with poor grammar in front of them?

Thanks for your attention to this matter. If the T is looking for a proofreader, I am happy to offer my services at a reasonable rate.

Best,
Melissa

I'll let you know if they respond.

And....cut.

2006-11-25T16:15:00.000-05:00

I'm looking for a clean break. Tidy, well-defined, with no strings left hanging. If my life is going to make the cut (for a novel, that is, followed by a based-0n-the-book movie), I simply cannot have any less. Oh, the ending might be dramatic, tragic, a real tearjerker -- in fact, anything less may not do -- but above all it needs to be clean.

The novel of my life will not be one of these pomo-y the-only-meaning-is-that-there-is-no-meaning choose your own adventure (because who knows what really happened?) type of books. It's not going to be one of those books that leave you hanging, the air pregnant with potential meaning but with no damn birth. I want meaning, consistent symbolism, authenticity and accessibility. No pretension, no bullshit, just honest emotion.

You see, I have a secret belief that my life is eventually going to become a novel; or, rather, I like to turn events in my life into novel-worthy stories. It's a game I play with myself, writing the prose even as I live through a situation.

"They hugged, desperately, unsure where their paths were taking them or what the next morning would hold. Reluctantly, she stepped into the cab and he closed the door, his eyes not leaving her for a second. Even as the taxi pulled away, he watched her, and she him, never breaking eye contact until finally the shifting geography of the road interfered."

Sometimes I skip right ahead to the movie. Zoom in on her face, pensive, full of hidden truths. She looks at him. One tear slides slowly down her cheek. She looks away. Pan back to reveal the city skyline; cue soaring music. Etc., etc.

(Thanks, perhaps, to my uncanny ability to come up with a song lyric for each and every situation or in the place of just about any line of conversation, I also usually have the soundtrack to a scene pre-cued.)

I'm constantly aware of the subtle symbolism of a potential-novel situation, the hidden meanings of every glance and every word. (Regardless of whether such meanings exist...when in doubt, I'll make them up.) Unfortunately for my upcoming novel, of course, I have a tendency towards melodrama.

Hence, perhaps, my desire for clean endings. Melodrama and uncertainty don't work together; if there is uncertainty, you can always come up with a happy potential ending to drown out the sheer tragedy of the likely ending. The fluxes of emotion need a clear ending; they need a death, a last kiss, a final goodbye. They need closure.

I, too, need closure.

When I was 15, I broke up with my first boyfriend, the love of my life (at least at that point.) I did not, shall we say, take it well. I was a mess, for months on end.

Very specific in my mind is the time when I had finally decided-slash-realized that it was over, that he wasn't coming back, that we weren't getting back together. I had saved every physical memento I could of our relationship (yeah, I was, at one point, one of those girls). I had ticket stubs, I had notes passed in class, I had pictures and dried corsages and the bows on the presents he gave me for xmas. Oh, I kid you not.

Looking back, I cringe a bit at the melodrama of it all, the pure teen angsty-ness, but at the time it was all deeply meaningful. That night I finally decided it was over, I held myself a little ceremony. Sitting on my bed, I spread out every memento and keepsake. I picked each one up, thinking about all of its associated memories, crying over each date, each inside joke, first kisses and last, love lost and all the rest. (Zoom in on the dried corsage; flash back to prom night, Melissa beaming in her red silk dress, her boyfriend by her side.) One by one, I put them into a box. And then I sealed the box and put it away somewhere safe, to be viewed again only when I was safely through all the trauma and could view them again without breaking down. Needing closure and unable to get it, I created my own.

This time round, a little older but lord knows not much wiser, I'm resurrecting old tricks and finding ways to manufacture closure once more. I tried the dramatic ending, full of effusions of passion and lengthy proclamations (half geared towards a clean final ending; the other half hoping these effusions of passion might win him back.) With an eye towards the novel of my life, I laid myself out completely on the table, trying to prevent any future possibility of regret. ("If only I had told him....").

It didn't work. After awhile of laying on the table, unnoticed or at least unacknowledged, I realized all I was doing was getting chilly. Raw emotions don't weather well, and dramatic, climactic endings don't work in monologue form. Besides, let's be honest, I wasn't really looking for an ending that time.

This time around, I'm trying a new approach. The quiet ending, full of slow acceptance and gentle resignation. I don't have much to work with, but I'm manufacturing closure as best I can -- archiving old emails, deleting his number from my phone. (Clearly only a symbolic gesture; I very much doubt that I will never call him again, but we'll cross the bridge later.) Pulling away discretely, under the radar. Unnoticed again, but this time on purpose. It won't make for as good a scene in the novel...but at least it'll be clean this time.

This is my last love-lorn blog entry, as well (at least about this failed relationship.) Another form of closure: a bit of indulgence, a little wallowing, and then cutting myself off for good.

So in the interest of written documentation, a bit of indulgent melodrama, and notes for the novel, let me write this down, get it out of my head, and be done with it. I loved, foolishly but forewarned. I loved, despite all of his best efforts to make himself as unlovable as possible. I tried every conceivable way I could to make it work, not even knowing what "it" is, or was. I loved and loved hard, and it was not enough.

And now, in the words of Blake,
Enough! Or too much.

To Be Taken with a Handful of Salt

2006-11-19T19:58:00.000-05:00

I remember when I lost my mind.
There was something so pleasant about that phase...
even your emotions had an echo
in so much space.

- Gnarls Barkley, "Crazy"

There are times lately when I'm sure I am slowly going insane.

Insanity, which I am defining today, for the moment, as lacking a reference point. A fixed spot in time and space and emotions and understanding by which you can measure everything else. You know where "there" is only by knowing where "here" is. You know happiness only in relation to sadness, up in relationship to down, now in relationship to then. The right path is only right in comparison to all the wrong ones. Without a reference point, you are left floating in a dimensionless sea of "where am I, who am I, where am I going and what the fuck do I do from here?"

I'm thinking too much. Which is only too much, mind you, in comparison to not enough. Not that I would know what is enough, or too much, or not enough at all, because, you see, I've lost my reference point. I'm freefalling through a maze of principles and standards and ideas and desires, trying to hold onto just one thing I believe is immutably true. But everything I grab just turns to ashes in my fingers as I realize that, no, that truth is not universally true, either. That standard is not iron-clad, that principle, too, I am willing to throw away for that desire.

I'm having a difficult time making judgements, or evaluating the actions of others. I'm turning the offhand comments of friends into monumental statements about me, them, our friendship, and the meaning of life. I'm taking offense where I have a sneaking suspicion I should not and not taking offense (or, at least, not doing anything about it) at times I feel I probably should. I'm manufacturing dramas out of ether and then starting to believe them. But, lacking a reference point for what is meant casually, what is meant seriously, what is real, what is fake, what is acceptable and what is not, I wouldn't really know for sure. I just don't trust my instincts these days. I don't know what, if anything, I actually believe. And I certainly don't know what the fuck I do from here.

The closest I think I ever really came to insanity was a five day stretch I spent on a beach in Goa, India. I was reminded of this time the other day when I was going through old travelogue emails from that trip. (Though I didn't actually need to be reminded; the impact of those five days is always present and will stay with me forever.)

I spent five days in a shanty up on a cliff overlooking the rocky beach of Arambol. I'd come to Goa, the infamous party destination for backpackers the world over, in search of companionship. Some laid-back times with easy beach friends, parties, good times, long conversations, lots of fresh fruit, even more fresh ganja. I didn't find that in Arambol. (I did, later, in Palolem, but that's another story.) In fact, I really couldn't find anyone in Arambol that I work up the energy to talk to.

So I didn't talk. To anyone, except the waiters at my daily haunts, and then only to order. I retreated inward. I had no sense of time but the sun. I slept till I woke, I ate when I was hungry. I read, I swam, I lay in the sun, I walked the beach, I stared off into space. Actually, I think I spent most of the five days staring off into space in some way.

The first day was sad. I was lonely and felt like I was missing this great party somewhere that I just couldn't find. Resignation came the second day, when I started to realize this was not the social spot I was seeking...and yet the place was so beautiful I couldn't leave just yet.

The third day was when it started to get a little scary. It was the morning of this day I decided to actively not seek people out, to embrace this vow of silence for a few days and see where it took me. And oh did it take me -- to places I didn't know my mind could go, to ideas I'd never before entertained, to conclusions that surprised me and to revelations both painful and joyous. I dug deep and, sorry to sound incredibly cheesy here, but I learned a whole lot about myself.

It was on the fourth day that I was pretty sure I was close to insanity. That was the day I lost my reference point, just a bit. My mind was everywhere and nowhere. For an hour, I would have absolutely no focus; for the next, I would focus intently on one tiny, tiny point - a phrase in a book, a rock in the sea. I'm sure it sounds like I'm exaggerating, but I've truly never had an experience like this.

And then on the fifth day came calm. Perhaps it was because I knew I was moving on the next day, and that I would go back to speaking with people again, but I began to revel in my silence, to embrace it. I loved my brief hermit lifestyle. I shunned others. I wanted to be alone. And my mind, sent off on far flung travels, came back to me, refreshed, with a new sense of clarity.

This current freefall (or is it freeflying? or freefloating? Not knowing up from down, I can't be too sure) isn't really the same as that time in Goa, except for the feeling of lacking a reference point. The feeling of approaching insanity is the same, though the causes and effects and all the rest are different.

Last time, when I finally grabbed onto a point of reference again, everything else in my life for a moment became crystal clear...and indeed, I look upon that five day stretch in Goa as some of the most important and meaningful days in my life. It was absolutely worth that brush with insanity, however terrifying it was.

So I hold out hope that this current mess, too, will prove useful. I hold out hope that these long days and longer nights will be worth it. I hold out hope that my reference point is out there, and that when I get there it will be a better place than wherever I was before.

...and hey, maybe I'll get a book out of it. Weren't all the best novels written by authors gone entirely nutty?

Borat Strikes Again?

2006-11-17T11:10:00.000-05:00

I'm sure this has got to somehow be a joke, or another form of the underground marketing campaign for the Borat movie, or something. This can't truly be serious.

Someone from Almaty City in Kazakhstan visited my blog last night. That's right, Kazakhstan...a country I am not totally sure I had ever even heard of before the Borat explosion.

How did they get to my site?

By googling the phrase "I like my breasts."

I'm not even sure which I find more amusing -- the fact that someone in Kazakhstan is reinforcing this cultural stereotype of Kazakh men being both sexually crazed and repressed that Borat has singlehandedly created...or that my blog features prominently when one searches for the phrase "I like my breasts."

Homesickness

2006-11-09T14:01:00.000-05:00

A favorite pair of jeans. A beloved old sweatshirt. A key sliding perfectly into a lock. Like a glove. You never forget how to ride a bike. I’m trying to find a way to describe the physical feeling of being near a close friend or old lover after a long time apart, but I’m only coming up with tired old metaphors. Is there anything like standing next to a former lover? This strange mix of intimacy and newness, of unconsciously falling into familiar old patterns of memorized physical motions all the while knowing that you haven’t felt this way in awhile. Yeah, it’s like putting on a favorite pair of jeans, or wearing an old sweatshirt, but it’s so much more.

I have a strong physical memory of the first time I wore a pair of jeans after going a long time without. I was in Bangkok, and I’d spent five months wearing nothing but flowy, shapeless, pajama style lightweight cotton pants and skirts. Fisherman pants and salwar kameeze, the wardrobe staples of backpackers in Thailand and India. Before I flew to Japan, I decided to treat myself to a pair of nice jeans, a way of transitioning back to Western-style clothing.

I remember sliding the jeans on for the first time. They were stretchy and fitted, clinging to my legs in a way I had not felt for months. Slightly stiff (compared to flowy cotton) around my body, structured. Suddenly I remembered what it felt like to feel fabric against the inside of my thighs. I remembered what it was like to zip up a pair of jeans and close them with a button. I noticed a change in the way I walked, in the way I sat down. A pair of jeans made everything a little different.

And yet it was so familiar. I live in jeans, when I can. I loved the feeling… but I was also acutely aware of its strangeness, of the way it differed from other pairs of pants.

This is the closest metaphor I can think of to describe the feeling of standing next to an old flame. It’s like wearing a pair of favorite jeans after not wearing jeans at all for months.

I had this feeling recently, standing next to someone I’d once been so intimate with. I knew, distinctly, this feeling: standing at a certain specific distance from someone, our bodies in particular positions, our heads at a particular angle to facilitate a particular degree, length, and intensity of eye contact, with (not to get all hokey here, but whatever) energy flowing between us in a very particular way. I knew that spatial relationship well. That physicality was incredible familiar.

But also new. Like remembering what it felt like to walk in jeans again, I was very, very aware of our physicality. With distance, I could examine it, I could see how it differed from my physical interactions with others. (And I don’t mean this sexually; I’m really referring to the way you interact with someone physically in, say, a bar – the way you stand next to each other, the frequency or ways in which you touch each other, or don’t touch each other, the way you angle your head or move forward or back)

No wonder it’s so easy to fall back into relationships with old loves, no matter how doomed or tragic they may be. Taking the degrees of emotional comfort and intimacy out of it for a moment…the feeling of physical comfort alone can explain it. It’s so easy to be seduced by a “fit” that works and that you are used to.

It takes time to figure out your physical relationship to someone. I think about it all the time with new friends. How close do you stand? How often do you touch each other? Everyone has a different level of physicality, and it takes time to figure that out. When do you become “hugging” friends? (I remember a time I realized a relationship with someone had gone from being collegial and work-related to more of a real friendship when we started hugging goodbye.) I have some friends I kiss on the cheek to greet hello, and other friends with whom I would never do that. (And there is a certain level of strangeness when you mix these things up! This weekend I saw a friend I had not seen in months. Instinctively, I gave him a hug and kissed him on the cheek. He responded oddly, a bit surprised; it was at that moment I realized we were not “kiss on the cheek” friends. Am I overanalyzing? Maybe. But I think we all use physical clues like these to signal the degree of intimacy in a relationship. Shift the dynamic and there are all sorts of implications. Think of the way you feel when someone you don’t know well is standing in your comfort zone.)

Physical relationships, in other words, take time to build and time to decipher. And so of course, when we find an old physical relationship that we remember, that feels so easy, that once felt so good (oh, and still does), a dynamic that once felt so right, of course we want to slip back into it.

When you’re standing outside a door, shivering cold, a set of keys in your hand, trying one after another after another, trying to make them fit, knowing they are all just a bit off, how can you not feel a sense of great relief when, finally, you slide the right key into the lock, turn, and feel the lock flip? Of course you want to open the door, get out of the cold, cold air, and say to yourself, “I’m home, again. I’m home.”

Vote, Goddamnit.

2006-11-06T22:19:00.000-05:00

hold me down
i am floating away
into the overcast skies
over my home town
on election day
- Ani Difranco, "Hello Birmingham"

It's Election Eve, and I'm going to get a good night's sleep.

I'm feeling decidedly mixed about that. A little thankful, perhaps, to not be making that final push on a mixture of caffeine and pure adrenaline, strung out from nights upon sleepless nights, to not be nervously anticipating the results of any particular election, to not have a head filled with precinct numbers and turnout predictions. I truly don't think I could have done it again, so soon after my last race. I'm feeling a little thankful for the sanity I have intact right now...and a little thankful I have occasion to remember how precious that sanity truly is.

But also a little helpless, a little useless. I've worked a full election day for, by my count, at least the past seven election days (counting primaries and special elections and the like.) I've been running the GOTV operation for, or at least heavily involved in the planning of, at least five of those. Election night and election day have a special magic for me, a tinge of nostalgia filled with some of the absolute biggest highs I've ever known. And now, this time round, I sit at home at 10:30, blogging -- of all things, blogging! Tomorrow, I'll get up early to vote, then sit at work for nine hours, irritated by my lack of vacation days. Oh, I'll run and do a little last minute phonebanking from 6-8, but that feels like a token, a trifle, compared to the e-days I know and love.

And at 8:15pm or so, when we start to get results, it'll be interesting. I'm excited about Deval Patrick and am looking forward to that win. I've got a few State Rep races I care about - did some work for them, have some friends working on them, etc. And of course the national race for the House and Senate will be both fascinating and, hopefully, cause for celebration. But truth be told, my overall level of investment in any of these races is low. I doubt I will wake up either elated or depressed Wed morning. (Or, as has been the tradition for many past elections, hung over beyond belief...since I've got that pesky non-elections job to go to Wed morning, as well.)

So I feel a bit like the kid who got a fever on Halloween -- sitting at home, all dressed up in costume, knowing my friends are all out there having fun and getting lots of candy. I feel a little like an actor in an audience, watching someone onstage play a role I once played. I feel a little like the high school wallflower during the last slow dance of the night, wishing that one boy (or any boy) would ask me to dance but knowing full well I'll be sitting this one out.

So I'm sitting this one out. But I've got my costume on, kids, and I know the lines by heart...so just you watch, next time. Just you wait.

Oh yeah, and go vote.

Connecting and Disconnecting

2006-11-03T10:38:00.000-05:00

The progressive political scene in Boston is a relatively limited one, and the pool of interesting, available political jobs rather small. While Boston is certainly a political city with a generally thriving progressive community, it's not, say, DC, where practically everyone you meet is involved in politics in some ways and the job boards are filled with jobs I would be both qualified for and interested in doing. (because, you know, I look sometimes, whenever I am feeling discouraged about my career here in Boston.)

Thus, it is practically inevitable that the people you meet in your job search will not disappear from your life once they have rejected you (or you, them, though I haven't yet had occasion to do that one.) Even more inevitable that you will meet or perhaps even work with the person who got the job you wanted. Sometimes it feels like a small, small town.

And you need to be gracious, of course...especially if you anticipate looking for work in the future. You never know who knows who (or, rather, you know that everyone knows everyone), and you never know which of these people might be in the position to decide whether or not to hire you in the future.

This seems to be happening a lot to me lately. Friends of mine will end up raving about the people who were hired over me. (On the one hand, it's good to know that at least the person who beat me out is qualified. On the other hand....). Today at a breakfast fundraiser, I not only ran into someone who declined to hire me, but into another person who I am pretty sure got the job I mostly recently tried hard to get. Seriously, out of a room of maybe 20 people, I met two people who were emblematic of my recent failures on the job front. Lovely.

Funny thing is, I've been generally happy in my job lately. The promotion and increased responsibility helps (more money would help too, but I guess we'll take these bridges one at a time), as does spending the vast majority of my time on a client I actually care about. It's still for-profit work, but I feel as though the public relations work I am doing is on behalf of the forces of good, and that public education portion of my job is (or will) make people's lives better. That's a big step up, in my mind. I'm learning a lot, I'm doing interesting work, and I think I'm doing it pretty well. So really, on a day to day basis, I'm not too unsatisfied.

Yet when I go to these political events and fundraisers and the like, I can't help getting incredibly jealous. That's the world I want into, and while I feel like I've been able to crack the surface here and there and make my foray, in small ways, I'm still an outsider looking in. The minute I mention I work in public relations, most people's eyes glaze over. I am no longer interesting to them. Oh, I try to mention my political work or connections to the scene or what have you, but it always feels so fake, so network-y. I am not, yet, one of them, and they know it.

Or maybe they don't. It's also possible I make the whole thing up in my head out of self-consciousness. Maybe I'm projecting my insecurities about my work situation (and there are many) onto the people I meet.

I've recently vowed to stop saying "Oh, I work in public relations" apologetically, as if there is something wrong with it. Problem is, deep down, I think there is. As I was telling my friend G. the other day, I have a conception of what I, at 24, should be doing with my life, and where I should be...and this isn't it. This doesn't fit into my master plan of where I want to be and how I'm going to take over the world. (You know, so to speak.) I might enjoy my job, I might feel as though I am learning good things and doing good things, but the disconnect between where I am and where I think I ought to be is huge.

And, thus, I remain continually disappointed. In myself, in my ability to get the job I want (or, rather, inability), and in my contributions to the larger political movement.

Question being of course, is it a case of inflated expectations or poor performance? Do I simply expect more than is reasonable, or am I just not living up to reasonable expectations?

You Can Call Me, Al

2006-10-30T20:37:00.000-05:00

I'm feeling naked tonight. Naked, isolated, and alone. You see, in my hurry to get out of the office (finally) this evening, I left my cell phone at my desk and didn't realize it till I was on the bus.

Sitting on the bus, weighing the pros and cons of going back to get my cell, I realized what a true test of my own sense of self-importance this situation is. Do I really think I am so important that the world will collapse if I can't be reached by phone for one evening? Is there any message I could miss that would be so dire that it couldn't wait till 8:30am tomorrow? Am I so reliant on being connected that I simply can't deal with being unconnected for one night?

Just a few years ago, I was using a landline and an answering machine. If you wanted to reach me, email was the safest bet -- because even if I wasn't home all day to check my messages, I would surely check my email a couple of times a day. A few years ago, I wouldn't have worried in the slightest if someone couldn't call me and reach me instantly. Hardly anyone had cell phones; no one expected me to be instantly accessible, and I expected it of no one.

Cell phones have insidiously caught us in a trap of expectations. It is expected that we are (generally) pretty reachable. Oh, sure, we may be in a meeting or on a date or in some other situation where we can't answer our phone right away. But if you really need to reach someone, you can call them a few times in a row to signal it's important or send them a text or something. If you leave a voicemail at 7pm, you can be pretty sure they'll at least get it before they go to bed. If it's important, you can reach them.

And if you can't, you get concerned. Or irritated. Or both. Why aren't they available? Why aren't they returning your phone call? Who gets to be unreachable for a whole night these days?

And so sitting on the bus, cell phoneless, I started to thinking about who might want to reach me tonight. Do I send them an email, letting them know my phone is at work? Is it or is it not the height of assumption to email someone to let them know "just in case they wanted to reach you," that they would have to do it via email? Who gets an email, and who do you assume you can just call back tomorrow?

I thought about the people I was supposed to call tonight. I thought about the people who I figured would probably call me, either because we talk every night or I thought we has something to discuss, or what have you. I thought about people who might call me for time sensitive work-related matters. (Political campaigns are unpredictable; just because you aren't normally needed ASAP doesn't mean you won't be tonight.) I thought about a person or two I have been hoping would call but don't expect to. (Though I'm sure tonight will be the night they do.) I thought about people I was hoping would not call, yet whose call I would not want to miss if they did.

And I don't even talk to people all that much at night.

Occasionally, just occasionally, I turn my phone off for the night. I turn it off, and I decide not to care who may call. Not because I'm in a meeting, not because I'm out with friends, but simply because I don't feel like being reachable. I want to be unavailable.

It's a little terrifying, actually. Terrifying, and freeing at the same time. To be a little selfish, to claim your time for you, to be available when and if you feel like it (and only when and if you feel like it). To take yourself out of the loop, just a little.

I can be, well, a bit of an anxious person from time to time. I worry about many a thing, and inconveniencing others unnecessarily or not being available when a friend needs me are two things I worry about a fair amount. (I mean, relatively speaking.) What I'm saying is that I am well aware that I perhaps have overanalyzed this cell phone situation a wee bit. (But seriously, what would I blog about tonight if I didn't have something to overanalyze?)

But if you think I'm totally nuts, here's a test for you: turn your phone off. Right now. Turn it off (and I don't mean on vibrate), put it in your bag, don't look at it until, say, noon tomorrow. And then tell me if you don't start thinking, just a little bit, about whose call you may miss.

A little terrifying, right? Just a little. But also a little freeing.

Drinking the Kool-Aid, Part II

2006-10-24T15:22:00.000-04:00

You know something is a little out of the ordinary when I find myself agreeing (generally) with a Boston Herald columnist.

Oh, I love the Herald (much to the surprise and perhaps consternation of my friends in the progressive community.) Yep, they're brash, they're noisy, they're decidedly conservative, they run some bigoted, awful editorials and op-eds, their headlines often distort the theme of the story, and they specialize in god-awful pictures of politicians.

But they also do some of the best investigative journalism in town. You can count on them for news (and views) you won't find in that other big paper in town. They call politicians to task when it needs to happen...and they're particularly friendly to the anti-incumbent insurgency candidacies I tend to support. Plus, the Herald reporters and columnists I've interacted with have all been friendly, down-to-earth, easy to work with, and trustworthy.

And the Herald is kinda fun. Admit it - if the Herald and the Globe were newspapers, who would you rather grab a beer with?

That said...that said. It's still a rare day I find myself nodding my head when I read a Herald column.

But today, I think Margery Eagan (generally) got it right. And she said it a lot more eloquently than I managed to in my previous post the other day....

The money quote?

"Which does more harm to rape survivors: An admittedly exploitative ad intended to play on all women’ fears? Or a bigwig civil rights lawyer doing what rape survivors will tell you is almost unbearable - doubting and disbelieving them, even after a court conviction? It’s a toss up, I’d say.

The truth here is that Kerry Healey should never have run her parking garage ad. It demeans her entire candidacy. But Deval Patrick should never have said what he said, either, or asked the parole board to free a convicted rapist he’d never even met.

They both screwed up. And organized women’s groups should have said so, or said nothing."

You Don't Have to Drink the Kool-Aid

2006-10-20T16:29:00.000-04:00

Those of you who are following the Mass. gubernatorial race closely (or at all) are probably aware of Kerry Healey's latest bombdrop of an ad, a dark, fear-inducing ad attacking Patrick's support of convicted rapist Ben LaGuer.

It depicts a woman walking alone through a dark, deserted parking garage at night, with ominous music and horror-film green lighting. The exact sort of situation that makes most women a little frightened. The type of situation where I'd grab my pepper spray - back when i used to own it - or, these days, hold my key in between my fingers like I was taught in self-defense classes. In other word, the type of situation where any smart woman is on her guard against a possible unexpected assailant.

The Transcript:

Voiceover: Here’s a question. If a teacher at your kid’s school, or a friend, or a co-worker, if anyone you knew actually praised a convicted rapist, what would you think?

Voiceover: Deval Patrick did. Here’s what he said about brutal rapist Ben LaGuer.Deval Patrick: He is eloquent, and he is thoughtful, there’s no doubt about that. (Fox 25 Morning News, 10/6/06)

Voiceover: Here’s another question, have you ever heard a woman compliment a rapist?

Voiceover: Deval Patrick, he should be ashamed…not governor.

As has been remarked upon in other forums and in numerous papers, the ad pretty blantantly promotes the mesage that if Deval Patrick is elected Governor, women should be more afraid of rape.

It's worse than that, though. As many sexual assault victims' advocacy groups have pointed out, the ad plays up incorrect assumptions that most rapes are perpetrated by a guy hiding with a knife in the bushes (they aren't; most rapists know their victims).

Perhaps worst of all, of course the ad plays on racist cultural stereotypes of black men raping white women. Elect a black man to be governor? Prepare to be raped, ladies.

I'm horrified and deeply disturbed that Healey would run such an ad...though not surprised. But what has disturbed me and surprised me and even angered me more, however, has been the reaction within the liberal community to the ad, and the way in which sexual assualt is being discussed.

The reaction was instant anger at Healey (understandable), instant denouciation of such extremely negative attacks (no suprise there), and, of course, the fact checking. Turns out, some women did defend LaGuer, which skewers Healey's line about having never heard a woman praise a rapist.

Then there was the ridicule. Postings on the liberal blogs calling for "Write Your Own Kerry Healey Ad" contests, inviting bloggers to come up with the most awful, offensive ads they could to mock Healey's efforts.

And oh did they. All sorts of ads involving Patrick fucking dogs, or pictures of black men raping women, or all sorts of other ludicrous and awful things.

Here's the thing that bothers me about all of this: I haven't seen a single person acknowledge that it is disturbing that Patrick praised a rapist after it was very, very clear that the man was guilty. (There was some question on that issue for years, and some clear evidence that the man did not get a fair trial...but in the end, DNA tests conclusively proved his guilt.)

It's disturbing. Why can't we all say this and admit it? It is disturbing. I say this as someone who supports Patrick 110%. Who wouldn't think twice of voting for anyone else. Who finds Patrick to be incredibly inspiring, the type of person who is going to change politics, change government for the better. Who is so excited by the opportunity to vote for a different sort of politician.

And yet I am troubled. I am bothered. I am upset. Frankly, I'd like to know what the hell he was thinking. I want to know why he said those things. I want to know how he ever thought it was a good idea to go on camera and say nice things about a man who brutally raped an elderly woman.

Healey's ad is awful...but it's not ineffective, folks.

I know Patrick was trying to justify his years of letter correspondence with LaGuer (before his guilt was clear). I'm sure that LaGuer really is thoughtful and eloquent. Whatever. I DON'T CARE. You're running for Governor. You don't go around talking up a rapist. I don't care if there were women who also praised LaGuer. I disagree with them for doing so, too.

I know all the liberal blogger types were trying to rally the troops. I know that if we want Patrick to win, that's what we have to do. We circle 'round our leader, warts and all, and defend him to the death.

But the character of the discourse around this issue is embarrassing. It's offensive. It's not worthy of the progressive community. Those discussing this issue seem to ignore entirely the fact that sexual assault is a serious issue that affects many, many women. They seem to think that mocking an ad that raises a real issue (albeit in an inappropriate and borderline racist way) makes us better.

It doesn't. It makes us no better than Kerry Healey, and that isn't saying much these days.

The Perfect Black Cardigan, of sorts

2006-10-14T21:49:00.000-04:00

I've been obsessing lately over a black cardigan. Namely, the Perfect Black Cardigan.

The black cardigan, you see, is the anchor of my wardrobe. It goes with everything. It allows me to get extra mileage out of all my summer sleeveless tops. It dresses up a shirt for work. It keeps me warm. It is the go-to item, the throw-it-on-to-complete-an-outfit piece that I can always rely on.

I actually own many black cardigans, mainly because I am obsessed with finding and possessing the perfect one. But one is too stretched out; the other is nice, but short-sleeved; one is a little itchy; another got ruined when I washed it instead of taking it to the dry cleaners (oops.)

I had a Perfect Black Cardigan once (perfectly fitted, soft and finely knit, unobtrusive buttons, v-neck shaped, stops at the hips...oh yes, I've thought about this a lot.) Nominally, still do, but it's been left somewhere and I'm losing hope of getting it back anytime soon, if ever. (More on this later.)

As I've hinted at a bit on this blog, I've been going through a break-up, of sorts, lately. Of sorts, in the same way that Friendster allows you to label your relationship status as "it's complicated." (As if there are relationships that aren't complicated.) Of sorts, in the way that if you were never officially together, it's not quite clear if you can officially not be together. Of sorts, in that I'm not even totally sure if the person on the other end of this complicated relationship (of sorts) would even realize or acknowledge or agree that what has happened is a break-up. But whatever. I don't know the terminology to describe what I'm going through, so a break-up it is.

(Isn't it the eskimos who have seven different words for love? How woefully inadequate our language is, in comparison, in describing matters of the heart.)

So the cardigan, the Perfect Black one, is in the possession of my ex-something (of sorts), and getting it back is not working so well.

And so I've become obsessed with this cardigan. Every day, it's the item I want to wear. I have become increasingly aware of the inadequacy of all my other black cardigans. I have scoured stores across Boston, looking for a replacement. It's taking up a lot of my mental energy (and yes, I *do* realize just how pathetic this sounds.)

I was telling my roommate about the Saga of the Perfect Black Cardigan this morning (because all I seem capable of talking about these days are black cardigans and the of sorts breakup) and I joked that I was (almost) more upset over the loss of this cardigan than of the relationship.

She looked at me for a second, and then she said, "You realize that's called displacement, right?"

No, I didn't.

For some reason, I find this oddly hilarious. Deeply insightful and very likely true, but funny none the less. It's become a great running metaphor. For example, I'm learning to accept that I may not be able to find the exact same Perfect Black Cardigan in a store, but that doesn't mean I can't find an equally good or better one. Or that even though it seems like it could be so easy, I will probably never be able to get my original Perfect Black Cardigan back. Or today, when I bought a Slightly Less than Perfect Black Cardigan at the mall, I pointed out that, while I normally think one should not buy any old black cardigan just for the sake of owning one, that when one really needs a black cardigan, a less than perfect one will do in a pinch.

Thing is this: when you've seen the Perfect Black Cardigan, when you've worn it and owned it and know for sure that it exists, it makes it very difficult to settle for any less-than-perfect cardigans. But perhaps all the more motivated to go out and find it again.

Being the Bigger Person

2006-10-09T20:15:00.000-04:00

"Be the bigger person." It's the most useful piece of parental advice my father has ever given me, an oft-repeated phrase that came out whenever I was having a fight with a friend or was being picked on (as happened often enough) by jerky middle-school boys or generally whenever I was in a situation where I was feeling frustrated or upset by the behavior of someone else.

Be the bigger person. Extend the olive branch. Call and make up. Apologize, even if you're not sorry, because the friendship is worth more than winning a stupid fight you'll forget a week later. (Even if she was really cruel and said awful hurtful things.) Ignore the jerky boys. Let that woman steal your parking place. Let him cut you in line. Small stuff like that isn't worth getting irate over. Be the bigger person.

It's advice that got me all through high school with my good friendships generally intact. And though I am stubborn and like to have the last word and feel injustices strongly, I have never once regretted taking Dad's advice, being the bigger person, and finding a pretense to end the fight. Indeed, I credit that advice for saving a friendship with two of my best friends in the world. 8th grade, some big blowout over something I can't remember now (see?), the silent treatment for months. Which is a little hard to do, since we all had every class together and ate at the same lunch table and the whole shebang. Finally, mid-summer, I took a deep breath, nervously dialed their numbers, and said something along the lines of "so, this is stupid. Let's not fight anymore."

And thank god, cause lord knows I never would have gotten through high school without those girls. And they're still among the closest friends I've got. (AND admit that actually, I was right about whatever it was we were fighting about, but, then, who really cares anymore?)

In college, the more nuanced version of "be the bigger person" got me through the hard times with friends without having to have those big blowout fights. I learned to recognize that occasional shitty behavior can just be overlooked. A stray hurtful comment here or there, an unintended slight, a bad mood one night or a stupid drunken episode...not worth getting too
worked up over. Being the bigger person means letting those things go. And I am glad for those decisions, too.

From my best friend, I've learned a corollary to Dad's lesson: make the more loving choice. Whenever I'm weighing hurts or balancing my needs with those of a friend, I think of my best friend and about following her example, making the more loving choice...even if it's the harder choice, even if it involves swallowing hurts and giving up that metaphorical last word.

I've written in the past about my aversion to unresolved tension and my general dislike of conflict. I've been wondering lately if this has anything to do with Dad's advice. Have his admonishments to "be the bigger person" been so ingrained in me that I get all anxious if I feel like I'm not being the bigger person at any point in time? Has this advice, to end or avoid conflict in order to preserve the relationship, brought on my poor ability to deal with conflict at all? Even in those times when conflict is necessary and even good? (As I type this, I wonder if those times ever exist, even though I of course know they do.)

What happens in those times when being the bigger person means doing nothing? When the more loving choice is not to end the conflict? I'm suddenly in tailspin, my moral compass awry, unable to figure out which choice is best. What about those times when the rift is too big, the hurt is too much and too unforgivable? When patching things over one more time only stretches out the hurt - for both sides - and is, indeed, the choice of the smaller person, the weaker person. Or what if being the bigger person, over and over and over again, only enables a friend's bad behavior, only encourages them to treat you (and others) like shit? What if the more loving choice is actually to hold back your love?

Dad's advice was easy to follow when I was 14. The path it led me down was always clear. That's not so true anymore.

Time Wounds All Heels?

2006-10-02T14:46:00.000-04:00

As a kid, I hated tearing off band-aids. Absolutely dreaded it. To me, the pain – or, perhaps more accurately, the anticipation of the pain – of ripping a band-aid off was almost always worse than the original injury itself. When it was clearly time for a band-aid to go, when it was dirty and nasty and just couldn’t stay on my arm or leg for another day, I would start to ease it off slowly. I would pick at the edges, loosening the glue and tugging on one hair at a time, trying to minimize the pain. I would do this intermittently for hours, rubbing at the band-aid, doing whatever I could to avoid having to do the big pull.

I’m known to be a pretty squeamish person when it comes to medical things, and I’m like this with just about any medical procedure. I get anxiety attacks before going to the dentist. I am terrible at getting shots. Can’t handle the thought of an IV. One time, when I had stitches, I was so afraid of the pain of having them removed that I waited too long, and the skin started to grow around them. (Disgusting, I know!). As a result, this supposedly painless procedure was the single most painful thing I’ve ever gone through in my life. I still get goosebumps remembering the doctor pulling those stitches out of my skin.

In short, I am a big baby when it comes to pain.

I yanked off a metaphorical band-aid this weekend, despite my deeply ingrained instincts not to. I’d tried letting the wound heal, thinking the band-aid might just fall off. I’d tried picking around the edges of the band-aid, thinking I could minimize the hurt. I tried leaving the band-aid be…but in the end it was even too messy and awful for me to put up with. There was nothing to be done but rip it up.

And I found the pain was just as bad as I’d always imagined. Perhaps worse. Days later, I can still feel that excruciating pain, the burning heat, where I tore the skin of my soul. I can see the wound, and it’s still gaping. I want nothing more to dig that dirty band-aid out of the garbage, push it back down on my arm, rub it into my skin and pray that it sticks.

But there’s no putting a band-aid back on once you’ve tore it off. The adhesive is gone. Your choice has been made and the damage is irreparable. There’s nothing to be done but to find a new, clean band-aid and hope this one does the job.

But man, if I know anything about band-aids, it’s this…they don’t make them like they used to.

In Appreciation of My Breasts

2006-09-25T23:26:00.000-04:00

I'm home now -- an event which, in of itself, is still feeling beyond comprehension. I'm here, nominally, to cook and clean and generally take care of my mother, who had a simple masectomy last Tuesday. (Simple, as opposed to radical, means they "just" removed the breast and not any of the lymph nodes and muscular tissue underneath. It still seems awfully radical to me.) Despite my best efforts, however, the caretaking is not going so well, mostly because my mother is bound and determined not to be taken care of.

I cook dinner. Instead of lying on the couch or doing something else equally invalid-like, she insists on cleaning up behind me as I go. I've tried offering to start cleaning projects - mopping the kitchen floor or organizing the desk or whatever else needs to be done, and she tells me not to bother. I get the feeling watching me clean would just stress her out more. I'm feeling, shall we say, a bit useless.

Don't get me wrong. I'm thrilled that my mother is doing so well. She's up and about, she's active, and aside from some complaints of itching where the bandages are, you wouldn't be able to tell that she just had a masectomy.

Well, except for the fact that she's missing a breast.

And there's the kicker, that missing breast. She wears baggy shirts and you can't really tell unless you stare (which I'm trying not to do), but I know she's constantly aware of that missing piece. She cracks jokes, and we all laugh -- they are funny-- but I wonder if she's actually feeling self-conscious.

Lord knows I am. All I can think about are my own breasts. I can't help but look at them and appreciate them. I like the way they look in my shirt. I like the way my baby niece nestles up against them and falls asleep. I like the shape they make when I see my reflection in the window right now.

See, the thing is this. My grandmother developed breast cancer in her early 40's. My mother got it in her late 40's. It's looking like the chance of me getting breast cancer by the age of 50 or so is ridiculously high. I figure I've got about 25 years left before I, too, lose my breasts. So I think I'd better appreciate 'em while I've got 'em.

I like my breasts. The girls and I are friends, you know? We get along just great. I've had issues with just about every other inch of my body throughout the years, at one point or another, but never with my breasts. They've never been too big or too small for me. They've always bounced just the way I'd like them to. They really work for me. I'd rather not lose them.

Every time I see my mother, down to one breast, all I can think is "I had better get some good use out of these babies while I've still got them." All I want to do is cup them in my hands and say "Hey, now. These are mine. You can't take them." I sort of want to run around town topless.

My mother works in retail. She told me that one day, a few weeks before the surgery, a girl came out of the dressing room and asked for Mom's opinion on the shirt she was trying on. "Do you think it shows too much cleavage?" she asked. My Mom replied, "Sweetie I'm about to lose my cleavage in a few weeks. If you've got it, you'd better flaunt it."

So if you see me bouncing around in a low-cut top one of these days, just remember -- I'm doing it because my mother told me to. I'm just following her advice. Better use 'em before you lose 'em.

Who Needs Sleep? (Well You're Never Gonna Get It...)

2006-09-21T22:23:00.000-04:00

My life – which has been pretty crazy lately as it is – has taken a turn into the surreal over the past few days.

Tuesday night, for better or for worse, win or lose, our campaign was supposed to end…yeah, not so much. Instead we spent the night tabulating precinct counts, making projects, and hearing strange tales of ballot and poll irregularities across the district. Well, other people on the campaign did that. I spent the night greeting guests at our victory party, schmoozing press, spinning stories, managing expectations, ordering pizzas (and more pizzas), talking constantly on my cell phone and, eventually, sort of losing it. Just a little. Sometimes that happens when you’ve been up for 42 hours straight, I suppose.

By the end of the night, it was still too close to call. (Not that that stopped our opponent from prematurely declaring victory, of course.)

Ironically enough, Wednesday and Thursday have been the busiest campaign days yet, at least for me. My phone started ringing with reporters around 11, and it literally did not stop for more than five minutes until 4 pm or so. I ate through a quarter of a month’s minutes in one afternoon.

Today at the vote count was the biggest media circus I’ve ever personally witnessed. Cameras from every station, radio, four – four! – reporters from the Globe, more from the Herald and all sorts of other papers, including a strange contingent of little old Chinese ladies from the Asian press. They were adorable.

Oh, it’s lots of fun… and certainly great experience. As I wrote a few posts ago, I really love this sort of thing. Getting to spend the afternoon chatting up reporters at all the major outlets is like Christmas in April for me. But really, how fricking surreal is your life when you come back to your real job, open up Boston.com, and see your pictures on the opening splash page? How weird is it to see yourself (in the background, granted) and your campaign on every channel? At what point does making the front page of the Globe stop being so exciting? (I hope not anytime soon.)

I came home tonight and, on a whim, decided to check on my herb garden. I have carefully tended this herb garden all summer. I planted it with love, I watered it faithfully, I read up on the best way to care for each variety and pruned it carefully. I’ve killed every plant I’ve ever had, so the success of my herb garden this summer is, or was, a point of great pride.

My herb garden is dead. Wilted, withered, gone. That’s what happens when you don’t water it for two weeks. When you stop pruning. When you neglect.

I’m wondering if this is a metaphor. I’m seeing a point, somewhere, in the somewhat near future, when I might get to go back to the rest of my normal life. Where I get to sleep normal hours and cook elaborate dinners and go dancing in stupid clubs and actually see my friends and pick up the paper without looking for my name. Normal life is going to happen again – I know it, even if I don’t quite yet believe it.

And when I get back to that normal life one of these days, I can’t help wondering just a little bit what I’ll also find dead. What bills I’ve forgotten to pay, what calls I’ve entirely neglected to return, what clean clothes I will possibly have left to wear. What relationships I’ve left unwatered for far too long.

This has been a whirlwind of a month. If nothing else, it’ll be fascinating to see where I’m dropped when this tornado eventually ends.

Instant Karma's Gonna Get You

2006-09-18T09:33:00.000-04:00

Okay, okay, ye gods of karma. I get it. Lying is bad. Making up excuses is wrong. I apologize.

Now, please, won't you let me get some sleep?

I faked a headache last week to try to buy some extra hours of sleep. Around 5am Wed night/Thursday morning, when I was finally crawling into bed, it occurred to me that getting up in two hours for work was a really bad idea. Going on the logic that I would get more done in four hours (if I had slept some) than I would in eight hours (if I had not slept), I decided to cop a headache that "kept me up all night," take a few hours sick time, sleep in, and go to work late.

In fact, it was the right decision. I got a ton of work done in the four hours I was at work. I was a better and more productive employee. I was able to get through the next evening of campaigning without falling asleep. I absolutely made the right choice.

Except, of course, that little thing that involved lying about a headache. I guess that was probably a morally 'wrong' thing to do.

We'll leave aside my long diatribe on why my time should be my time, and if I have a certain amount of sick time a year and want to take part of it to sleep in because I know I will not feel well if I don't (sort of like preventive sick time), and if taking a few hours sick time will actually make me a better worker during the time I am at work, then why shouldn't I do it? I won't get too deeply into the fact that I am deeply bitter about this corporate mindset that not only condones but encourages employees to lie if they want to be able to use their earned time off. Regardless of my philosophical problems with the sick-time system, fact is I abused it just a little bit last week.

And now I can't sleep. Friday night, I figured my sleep schedule was still off from Wednesday night's lack of sleep. Saturday night, I blamed it on the mild case of sun poisoning I think I got that day. I tossed and turned and felt truly awful and nauseous all night, but there seemed to be a valid cause behind it.

But last night? I went to bed at a highly reasonable 1am after a long and exhausting weekend. I was more than ready to crash. I needed to sleep. And yet I lay there, wide awake. 2am. 3am. 4am. 5am. Unable to fall asleep, unable to quell the four thousand thoughts racing through my mind, unable to relax. Finally, around 6am, I think I managed to doze off...for a whole hour before I had to be up again.

Karma's a bitch.

And if I don't get some sleep soon....I will be, too.

A Little Shameless Bragging

2006-09-13T14:05:00.000-04:00

It's days like today that I know I'm in the right profession. (Not with the right employer, perhaps, but definitely in the right profession.)

I'm a media addict. To me, there is absolutely nothing like the thrill of the hit...nothing like seeing a story you pitched (or worked to get your quote into, or worked to push the angle in a certain direction) make it into the paper.

I get all worked up and excited over what I know are relatively minor matters: placement on a page, column inches, days a story ran, making the lead quote, setting the tone of the story. Who won today's media cycle? Whose message is the story going with? Whose picture did they run with, and what does the headline say?

So for a news-junky like me, today was an awfully good day.

It started off this morning with a 6 minute WBUR (Boston's NPR station) story on my candidate. 5:49am & 7:49am, prime drive time. The story was perfect: repeated our message a zillion times, great quotes from the candidate, and great 'man on the street' interviews that sounded like they were reading our talking points (and they weren't...really!).

In the hierarchy of news media, NPR to me sits right up there with the NY Times. It's certainly equal, at least in my mind, to a Boston Globe story. They're hard to pitch, difficult to get onto, and can be a little unpredictable at times. Scoring this one is a HUGE excitement to me.

After that, there were articles in the Boston Herald. Their endorsement (or lack thereof) was less than thrilling, but we made the lead quote and set the tone for their coverage of last night's debate. I'll take it.

Plus endorsements from the Phoenix and Beacon Hill Times. Lots of positive chatter on the blogs. And a few requests for comments -- more stories tomorrow!

This is shameless bragging, I know. But I am riding awfully high today and feel like sharing.

Anatomy of a Bad Idea

2006-09-03T11:33:00.000-04:00

I just finished Zadie Smith’s White Teeth, one of those books where I find myself folding down page corners every few minutes because it’s filled with thoughts I want to return to. Here’s the one that caught me up this morning, the passage that feels like it was aimed right at me:

“Involved happened over a long period of time, pulling you in like quicksand…Involved is neither good nor bad. It is just a consequence of living, a consequence of occupation and immigration, of empires and expansion, of living in each other’s pockets…one becomes involved, and it is a long trek back to being uninvolved…and one didn’t do it for one’s health. Nothing this late in the century was done with health in mind. Alsana was no dummy when it came to the Modern Condition. She watched the talk shows, all day long she watched the talk shows – my wife slept with my brother. My mother won’t say out of my boyfriend’s life – and the microphone holder…always asked the same damn silly questions: But why do you feel the need…? Wrong! Alsana had to explain it to them through the screen. You blockhead; they are not wanting this, they are not willing it – they are just involved, see? They walk IN and they get trapped between the revolving doors of those two v’s. Involved. The years pass, and the mess accumulates and here we are. Your brother’s sleeping with my ex-wife’s niece’s second cousin. Involved. Just a tired, inevitable fact. Something in the way Joyce said it, involved – wearied, slightly acid – suggested to Alsana that the word meant the same thing to her. And enormous web you spin to catch yourself.”

What is so entrancing, so entrapping, about a bad idea? What is it that pulls us, magnetic-like, against our own good sense, against our own logical arguments, against our own better judgment? How do we become involved in precisely those situations from which we know we should turn and run 180 degrees in the opposite direction? I don’t know if it’s a longing for self-destruction, an obsession with the fire so deep that we can’t help but step into it….or if it’s the ultimate mark of ego, this belief that we, and we alone, can play around in this situation without becoming involved. That we and we alone can make this work. That we and we alone can pull water from this rock.

Do we always know right away that it is a bad idea? Do we know from the beginning and simply look the other way (or look right at it, knowing it and even embracing it for the poor decision that it is), or are we fooled? Tricked into thinking “well maybe it’s not so…” and “yes, but…” until we can’t see the good from the bad, the right from the wrong, until there is no one right course of action, until everything is muddled and messed and any movement we make inevitably results in unbearable consequences.

This, in my mind, is the calling card of a bad idea. When the inevitable progression of events springing from an idea leads you to a situation where your ability to choose a good outcome in hampered. When you are backed into an alley from which you cannot possibly escape unwounded. When, as Smith writes, you are trapped between the revolving doors of those two v’s, and there is no getting out without a few scrapes to your soul.

I sometimes think I am so fascinated by shades of gray that I lose myself in them. I bury myself so deep into the infinite grayness that I’m left without a black or a white to cling to. No up, no down. And of course no blame – for when right and wrong are constantly shifting things, when any conceivable action leads to both pain and pleasure, when there is no scale that can measure one action against another and come up with a quantifiable difference, how can you be blamed for choosing one path over another? How can I be blamed for making the “wrong choice” when there is no objective criteria by which to judge wrong choices from right? There is no need to face your own weaknesses when it’s clear that no one else, regardless of what strengths or weaknesses they may posses, could find a better way out – because there is no good way out.

It’s such a postmodern thing, almost clichéd, really, this refusal to believe in immutable truths and unshakeable values. This obsession with seeing the gray in every situation.

And so we don’t make decisions, per se. We don’t acknowledge the choices we make along the way, rather choosing to believe in circumstance, in situation, in uncontrollable forces. In a lack of culpability. And we become involved, without realizing it, without knowing it, without definitively choosing it, until it is far too late in the game to back out now. Involvement becomes both the anchor we cling to and the tangled web we wish to escape.

D-Day

2006-09-01T21:03:00.000-04:00

I spent most of today in a real funk. I was cranky when I woke up, less than pleased when I arrived to work, only to find out the elevators in our building were broken, irritable at the endless list things on my to do list that absolutely had to be done today, even more irritable at the other things on my list that really should have been done yesterday but totally need to get done by early next week, upset and self-righteously angered by perceived slights in emails, deeply depressed over the state of my afternoon, weekend, and life, and generally not in such a great mood.

It wasn’t until I was riding the bus home, watching the fifteenth UHaul in 5 minutes go by, that I realized….today was the first of September.

Is there any date (except, perhaps, the day after Christmas) more depressing than September 1st? Especially a cool, cloudy September 1st that holds that glimmer of fall in the air? Is there any better reason to be in a funk all day than the simple fact that today is September 1st?

As a kid, there was something nice about September 1st. Sure, the summer was ending and school, with all its attendant homework and lack of free time, was starting. But there was a first-day-of-school outfit to be picked out, new notebooks waiting to be filled with new pens, old friends to be seen and new friends to be made. New classes and new teachers, still to be viewed through the starry-eyes of the honeymoon period, new people to crush on, a new beginning to be made. September 1st used to be about new beginnings.

No more. To me, now, September 1st only signals the end. The end of warm days spent lying in the sunshine (not that I did nearly enough of that), the end of al fresco lunches and outdoor concerts. The end of summer flirtations and Summer Fridays.

September 1st is an end to indulgence. To laziness, to “next weekend,” to “I won’t decide just yet.” It’s an end to frivolity and a beginning to responsibility. September 1st is a time for decisions.

The to-apply-or-not-to-apply question has been laying heavily on me of late, as it seems to do every September. I change my mind daily. Two weeks ago, I was definitely applying to PhD programs. It was time; I was ready. I wanted to get my PhD in Political Science. I wanted that life. Last week, there was not a chance in hell I was applying this year. The thought of leaving Boston ripped me apart. The thought of spending the next 5 to 7 years of my life in a library made me weep. I did not want to get my PhD in Political Science, or anything else. Two days ago, I started to think about law school. Hey, maybe that would be a good idea, right? I started to get excited over Harvard’s loan program (which seems to help you out financially if you decide to forgo the $125,000+ a year firm job for some low paid public service position, though I’m sure there must be some fine print you can’t understand until you’ve already signed up for law school.) I started to think that was really what I’ve always wanted to do. Don’t get me wrong – I doubt I actually want to go law school. It’s probably just the decision-of-the-week.

But, see, it’s September 1st, and it’s about damn time to make a decision. Summer’s over, kids. Oh, the weather might get warm again. (Hell, with global warming, it might stay warm all winter.) You might fool yourself into thinking we’ve got a few weeks left. But it’s September 1st, and the time for foolishness has ended.

At least for another nine months.

Baby-Crazy (Indulge Me)

2006-08-30T13:29:00.000-04:00

I think I've discovered just how good it can get.

A week and a half ago (but oh how much longer ago it feels) I was home on vacation with my family, and I got to spend a day and a half with my niece/cousin/quasi-god-child Paige. (It's my cousin's baby, but we grew up practically as sisters. As Kristi is an only child and we've decided this baby really needs an aunt in her life, I'm it. You can call me Aunt Melissa. As for quasi-god-child...turns out the Catholic Church has some rules about the baby's godparents being Catholics, or something. So I'm godmother in spirit, if not by rites.)

I thought laying in a hammock was pretty amazing. I thought laying in a hammock in the woods was even better. I thought that napping in a hammock in the woods was pretty damn close to perfection. But as it turns out, I'm pretty much convinced that there is absolutely nothing better than napping in a hammock in the woods with your warm, soft, adorable month and a half month old niece napping on top of you.

Okay, so I'm not exactly a neutral source here, but I think she's pretty damn cute.

Wanna see?

Here's a few of Paige & her mom...

And here's Paige & Papa....who loves babies....

Of course, who doesn't love a baby?

Please, Sir, May I Have Another?

2006-08-25T10:27:00.000-04:00

Some random thoughts and observations – I’m feeling far too scattered to connect the dots today….

- I purchased what I believe is my eighth (count ‘em, eight) umbrella of the season today. Without fail, it never starts to rain until I’m already on the bus. Without fail, Walgreens never hesitates to raise the prices on their cheap-ass (I’m pretty sure the one I bought is already broken) umbrellas when it rains. I think this means I’ve spent over $60 on umbrellas this year. I’m going to stop thinking about this now.

- I’m starting to remember what real stress – that time-crunched, 8000 things to do at once sort of stress – feels like. The workload of having what are essentially two full-time jobs (one which paid, but that I care about only moderately; one which is pro-bono, but that, despite the many frustrations and stresses and fights and hassles, I absolutely love doing) is starting to weigh on me, and I’m trying hard to find a balance between doing what I care about, doing what I need to do, and trying to preserve some semblance of a non-work life (Ha! Fat chance.)

It makes me realize that I haven’t actually worked all that hard lately. This frantic pace isn’t new to me – it’s basically how I spent four years of college – but I haven’t been here in awhile. I’ve been taking it a little bit easy…making time for cooking, for friends, for reading for pleasure, for travel, for going to the gym, for long walks and nights on the town. That was a conscious decision on my part – to make some time for the non-work, non-political side of me – and I’m glad I did it. I’m even looking forward to getting back to that sometime soon.

But at the moment, it feels pretty good to remember what hard work for something I am passionate about is like. To remember what it feels like to be tired down to my bones, to subsist on not enough sleep for days (if not weeks) on end, to be thinking about five different things as I fall asleep and wake up still thinking about them. It feels good to work hard.

- We were prepping the candidate for an upcoming forum/debate last night, and at one point our consultant told that her that she needed to stop apologizing for things when she spoke because she had absolutely nothing to apologize for. She pointed out that she would try – was trying – but that she’d been apologizing for 27 years, whether or not she was sorry, and it was a hard habit to break. Immediately, every woman in the room nodded up and down, knowing exactly what the candidate meant. The consultant, who is as cocky and unapologetic as they come (and he would readily admit this), looked a little taken aback. I don’t know that he got it.

These are the differences between men and women (or at least how we’ve been socialized). The insidious differences that you don’t think about but that make all the difference. Women (and I’m generalizing here, but only to a point) apologize for having strong beliefs, for potentially hurting someone else (whether they deserve it or not), for possibly giving offense. Men not only don’t apologize for these things, but they don’t think to. It’s not a consideration.

I recently learned that my male co-worker (who is just out of college with much less experience than I have) went back and forth three times in his initial salary negotiations. Three times. Hell, I was impressed with myself for asking for a higher salary at all. It wasn’t easy to do. And then of course I rolled over when they tossed in an additional $500 (big money, right?) and told me that was all they could give me right now. I didn’t even think to toss back a second counter-offer, much less a third. (Were they lying? Of course. Do I now know I got lowballed? Absolutely. Did I push for a larger raise at my last salary review? Nope. I wimped out. I jumped at the first measly offer and said ‘thank you very much.’)

These are the differences. These are the things that make me think, were I to raise a daughter, I would do it differently. I wouldn’t let her get away with apologizing for her beliefs or not demanding what she deserves. I know my generation is a far cry from that of our mother’s, and even further from our grandmother’s. We’ve reclaimed the word “bitch,” we’re less worried about seeming “pushy,” and more and more often, we’re asking for what we deserve. But still I hope that the next generation of young women will be better.

Had We But World Enough, and Time

2006-08-19T17:38:00.000-04:00

On one of my long, extended trains of thought this week, I started to think about the literature that defines us.

(You'd be amazed how far your mind can wander when you spend hours each day laying in a hammock.)

I don't mean the literature we love the most or enjoy the most. I'm not talking about favorite books or treasured authors. I'm talking about books, poems, essays, plays, whatever, that alter and shape the way we view the world. Concepts, passages, lines and ideas that work their way into our consciousness, ready to be pulled out in a moment of need. A framing of thoughts that informs the way we view a situation, or a phrase from a novel that actually changes the way we act.

Let me be more specific. When I think about the literature that defines me, I immediately think of Marvell. To understand me, to understand the way I view the world and the route by which I choose my actions, I think you have to understand "To His Coy Mistress."

At first read, sure, it's all about a guy trying to charm his reticent lady into bed. While I certainly can identify with his quandary -- oh those reticent, virginal, quaint-honored ladies! -- it's the philosophy of life behind the poem that really draws me in. That striving for the intense experience, that admonishment to make much of time (though that's another poem.) That desperate race to make the sun run, the entreaty to grab pleasure in life we can before it all slips through our fingers.

This weekend, I met a friend of my brother who is one of the most intense kids I've ever encountered. Not intense in a dark-and-tragic sense...rather, you can simply tell that this kid is living life as intensely as he can. He's only 13, but within 30 seconds of meeting him, you know he will be the life of every party he goes to. Every time my brother hangs out with him, it's a little adventure.

Turns out, this kid had cancer when he was 10. It's all clear now, I guess, but he was pretty close to death at one point. And suddenly it all makes sense...when you almost lose your life at such a young age (perhaps even too young an age to truly comprehend the significance of it all), how can you not make every day an adventure? Even if he doesn't know it consciously, how can he not, in his very bones, know that every second had better be lived with intensity because who knows if it'll be your last? I hate to get all cliched and corny here, all sentimental about the shortness of life, but after an experience like that, I feel quite certain that at his back this kid, too, always hears "Time's wingèd chariot hurrying near."

And so I come back to Marvell:

Let us roll all our strength and all
Our sweetness up into one ball,
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Through the iron gates of life.

At times, I feel almost frantic with the need to do great things with small amount of time I feel I've been given. (Be that another year or another 80; they both feel far too short). I know there is far more out there to see, to do, to taste, to touch, to read, to learn, to visit, to know, than I can possibly achieve. I'm sure I don't have world enough, or time. I'll be lucky in my life to barely break the surface. And it drives me nuts when I see others caught up in inertia, unable to understand the urgency of grabbing what pleasures we can, now, before it' s too late.

So if I seem a bit crazed to you at times, a bit urgent when urgency seems unwarranted, a bit anxious for no discernible reason at all, understand it's only because I'm trying to tear through the iron gates of life... and sometimes they feel rusted shut.

Time to Get a Grip

2006-08-09T14:43:00.000-04:00

Oh Roberta
I don't look for you in other people
Like I used to do, that's dangerous
and my soul needs a rest...

-- Slaid Cleaves, "Oh Roberta"

I'm amazed, sometimes, by the way bad habits and poor decisions can pile up on one another, snowballing into one big, bad ball of unhealthiness. One bad decision begets another, and once you've gone down the path there's no stopping yourself. I saw it in my eyes this morning, after another late night of high emotions, heavy drinking, and barely three hours sleep. Or, rather, in the dark circles under my eyes. It's time for a rest.

There's been too many late nights, too many hefty bar tabs, too many cigarettes smoked (I've about crossed that line where calling myself a 'non-smoker' is a tad hypocritical) and unhealthy meals consumed. I'm a master of justification -- whether I'm celebrating a triumph or drowning a sorrow, I've always had a good reason, lately, to make the unhealthy choice.

I'm headed home for a family vacation this Friday, and I simply cannot wait. My mind is ready to leave all these stresses and worries behind in Boston for a few days, and my body is ready for a retreat. I'm looking forward to days spent lying on a hammock in the woods, swimming in rivers and hiking through forests. Cooking s'mores and reconnecting with my family.

I'm ready to rest my soul and recharge my brain. Figure some things out. It's time to start making smart decisions again.

Blogger Plays the Pimp for Desperate Male Mumbaikers

2006-08-03T22:57:00.000-04:00

I've got this thing called Site Meter on my blog, which basically lets you see how many people are viewing your blog and where they are viewing it from. Occasionally my blog goes international -- I've received views from people in countries in every corner of the globe -- which I always find a bit amusing. Sitemeter also allows you to see how the person got there -- for example, if they linked to your blog from another blog, or if they typed the blog name in on their own.

My personal favorite is when a person stumbles across my blog through Google search terms, which Blogger is so kind as to record.

(For your own personal knowledge, it might be useful to know that if you type in, say, "kinky sex with horses" and that connects you to someone's blog that has Site meter, someone, somewhere, will know that you, at IP address "1234567", are interested in reading about kinky sex with horses. Just, you know, so you know.)

Anyway. On a semi-regular basis, random souls out on the information superhighway (does anyone call it that anymore? What a great, if antiquated, term!) come across my blog by typing in seemingly innocuous phrases. My posting titled Vengeance is Mine Sayeth the Lord is popular -- and I just love the idea of all sorts of bible-quote-seeking types stumbling across my rather non-biblical (unless you mean in the biblical sense) musings. The Kundera quotes I like to sprinkle in from time to time are also popular. Really, any random phrase that isn't used all that often will do.

So today, a gentle reader from Mumbai, Maharastra, India came across my blog after using the Google Blogger search function. His terms? "Women who need male massagers in mumbai."

Love it. Some guy in Mumbai is trying to find a woman looking for a male massager, and he somehow comes across my blog. (I'm assuming it has something to do with my mention of the highly annoying Chowpatty Beach massagers in my posting on Mumbai.)

The real question is -- how many other blog sites did he come across that fit his search terms? And did he ever find what he was looking for?

p.s. And while I'm pointing out odd technical quirks of the blogging world...is it not the height of irony that Blogger's spellcheck does not actually recognize the word "blog"?

Really, I Just Don't Have Anything Interesting to Say

2006-07-31T22:22:00.000-04:00

Is there anything more self-indulgent that writing a post about why you haven't been writing posts? Is there anything more self-centered than assuming that others care if you've been too busy, or too uninspired, or whatever to write? Perhaps not. That said, I'm going to do it anyway.

So I haven't done much blogging lately. Which, if you read this at all on a regular basis, may be obvious. I've been busy, blah blah blah. Unexpectedly, I have actual work to do at work these days -- about f'ing time -- and I'm doing some campaign stuff on the side, which is taking up most of my "free" time these days. As much as I like to write, after spending a day writing at work, and then coming home and writing press releases for the campaign, writing a blog posting is about the last thing I want to do.

But really, I just haven't had much interesting to say.

I've learned I need a slightly hollow mind to come up with ideas and concepts beyond the everyday. I need a mind that is not filled to the brim with to-do lists and swirling emotions. I need time to ruminate on nothing at all, and the space to allow ideas to bounce around inside my head for awhile. Ironically enough, I've always considered myself as someone who "performs at her best" when things are hectic and crazy and the stress level is high. And generally speaking, that's true...but performing at your best and having time for big thoughts are two different concepts entirely. I'm only just learning that.

I've also been going through some issues, both positive and negative, of a deeply personal nature. The free thoughts that do find room to move around in my mind are all centered around things I don't want to blog about. While blogging may well be, at times, nothing more than a public diary, I have reservations about posting anything too terribly personal on here. Indeed, a part of me thinks my recent posting about my mother probably crossed that line for me.

I have no intention of this blog being a check-up on my life. It's about thoughts, not events. If you want to know what's actually going on in my life, call me. (And one of these days, I'll stop sucking and return your call....). And so while I was greatly appreciative of the outpouring of support I received from friends after posting about my mother (seriously, to all of you, a huge thank you. It truly meant a lot), I'm a little embarrassed and a little disconcerted. It strikes me as a bit of a cop-out to share such huge news with people through a website. That said, I haven't really reached the point of being able to talk about it much, so in many ways that's the only way I could get that out there. It was nice to know that my good friends knew without me really having to have that conversation.

(Because it's always an awkward conversation to have, isn't it? There's nothing really to say on both ends, yet you both feel like you should talk about it for a respectful number of minutes...like, at least 4 min, right? I mean, it's cancer. It needs to get at least four minutes. So you say things like "I'm so sorry" and "I'm sure it's going to work out" and "Let me know if you need anything" and "Oh don't worry, I'm fine" and while you sincerely mean everything, and you truly do care, you still just end up both feeling a little awkward and a little powerless to make anything better. Am I right?)

Besides, I don't, in the end, think a diary-modeled blog is very interesting. Restated positively, as an old professor would chastise me into doing, diary-modeled blogs are often real bores.

Conclusion being, I'm having a hard time coming up with ideas that inspire me to write postings, that accurately reflect my state of mind, and that stay away from those topics I'm trying to keep off-limits. And that aren't boring.

What else is a real bore? A long posting about why I'm not posting. So I'll wrap this one up, because at this point I'm even boring myself.

Thank You, Sheltered White Boy, For Your Opinion

2006-07-26T13:21:00.000-04:00

Today's Metro (the free "news" paper distributed on the T in Boston) decided to take on the tough issue of crime in the city. Specifically, it decided to ask a few dedicated Metro readers "How they feel about violence in the city?"

(For non-Bostonians, let me note that violent crime rates -- and in, particular, shootings/homicides -- have risen dramatically in the past year or so. I should also note that these crimes have primarily affected certain neighborhoods in Roxbury, Dorchester, Mattapan, the South End, and Jamaica Plain -- read: lower-income African-American neighborhoods where gang violence is a huge problem.)

So who did the Metro choose to ask about crime in the city? Perhaps someone that, say, lives in these neighborhoods?

Nope. Here's the interviewees:

Dan, a student from Allston (another note for non-Bostonians: Allston is the predominately white neighborhood in the west of the city where all the BU/BC college kids live. Far, far from the neighborhoods where crime has been a real problem) would like us to know that he's "never felt threatened or intimidated. You just need to be smart about where you go and what time you go there."

(Read: Just stay out of those crazy black neighborhoods, yo, and you'll be fine.)

Matthew, another student from Allston, notes that "it's not as bad as people make it out to be."

(Read: I dunno, I don't see anyone with guns in my neighborhood. I think they're all exaggerating.)

Jennifer, a business analyst from Chelsea (suburb north of the city) feels that "it's terrible that such a thing can happen in a city where you feel safe. It seems to be centralized in certain neighborhoods."

(Well, at least she acknowledges that it's a problem for some people in the city.)

Don't get me wrong here -- it's not as though I've personally been affected by the violence in the slightest. The closest I've come to any of it is knowing, peripherally, someone whose son was killed and having a friend who witnessed a shooting on her street. My (predominately white, gentrified) neighborhood feels perfectly safe to me at all hours. I'm not saying I have any better understanding of the violence going on in this city than Dan, Matthew, or Jennifer.

I'm just saying that it is incredibly insulting that the Metro would publish Dan, Matthew, and Jennifer's views on violence in the city -- all people who have admittedly not been affected in the slightest -- without going out and talking to people who have been affected.

Of course, that would mean sending a reporter to Roxbury or something, and who's going to be crazy enough to do that?

Fuck this Shit (That's How I Really Feel)

2006-07-24T19:45:00.000-04:00

My mother has breast cancer. These foreign words roll off my tongue and I don't know what they mean. My mother has cancer. What does that signify? What does that represent? What meaning can I possibly derive from these words except the end of life as I know it? My mother has cancer.

I've always known my mother was someday going to have breast cancer. Somewhere in my gut, I have been waiting for this conversation my whole life. Her mother died young, in her mid-40's , from the disease, and my mom has been vigilant about mammograms and tests and all the rest. It's as if we've all known it was coming one of these days and we've just been hoping to get the Paul Revere in time.

Oh, it's early stage, or almost pre-cancerous, or non-invasive, or something. "It's good that they caught it so early," my mother says. She's trying to cheer me up, she can hear me flipping out even though I try so hard to keep my voice calm and steady. She's worried that they may have to do the surgery during our planned family vacation in a few weeks. It eats me up inside that even as she must be dealing with the realization that the disease that killed her mother has come back for her, even as she is dealing with her own impending mortality, she is worrying about keeping my spirits up. About making sure my vacation is enjoyable and stress-free.

So I'm reading about stages, metastasis, survival rates. Breastcancer.org cheerily informs me that the 5 year survival rate for early stage breast cancer is almost 100%! (They note that after that the rates drop; they don't tell me how far.)

Five years! Five years. Five years is nothing. Five years is my brother only just turning 18. Five years and I'll still be a floundering 20something, still, I'm sure, as in need of my mother as ever. Five years is barely time to remodel the kitchen the way she's been talking about forever. In five years there's no time to go on the trips she's mentioned or read those books she's been saving for a rainy day. Five years is nothing. Thanks, Breastcancer.org, for trying to cheer me up. It's not working.

I was sitting on a bench in JP when I got off the phone with my mother. We couldn't talk about it much - she was at work and I know she didn't want to get into it. Besides, she goes to see the doctor on Monday to find out what the real scope is. What stage, what treatment, what chance of recovery. In the meantime it's all conjecture and the glass is half full.

It took me five minutes before I could even move from the bench. I wanted something, someone, some support, some lifeline, so desperately and I couldn't even figure out who I should call. That's when I realized that the person I really wanted to talk to, the one person who could give me the comfort I'm craving and convince me that it's all going to be okay, and the one person I couldn't go to right now, I couldn't be weak for...is my mother.

Right now, I just really want my mother.

This is My Love Letter to Mumbai

2006-07-12T22:16:00.000-04:00

As you may have heard by now, terrorists set off 7 bombs on crowded rush-hour commuter trains in Mumbai, India yesterday. Almost 200 killed; more than 700 wounded. Places I loved in India being bombed is starting to feel like a recurring theme in my life: first a restaurant I'd eaten at in the Old City section of Varanasi; then the Jama Masjid temple I'd visited in Delhi. Now Mumbai, the bustling, chaotic, beautiful city I fell hard for...and enjoyed so much that I changed my travel plans just so I could come back for a few more days.

I feel almost an obligation to talk about the city and the time I spent there...as if that will make any of it any better. As if that will fix a damn thing. An ode to Mumbai, a love letter of sorts, is all I've got right now.

Mumbai. Equal parts modernity and old world magic; the glamour of Bollywood side by side with some of the worst slums in the world. Embracing the West, with its malls and movie theaters, but ultimately rejecting it in favor of uniquely Indian homegrown desi-cool. (Desi, loosely translated, means local...but so much more.)

Mumbai was when I started really having fun on my trip. Where I started to learn to roll with the punches in India, to start to laugh when I was once more frustrated, befuddled, confused, or even cheated...instead of crying. It's where I started to really appreciate the culture. In Mumbai I embraced everything Western I found - true bliss, after almost two months travelling through rural India - and yet came to love all things India that much more for the comparison.

I arrived in Mumbai after a taxing 24 hour bus ride, and I instantly ran to the first "modern cafe" (I'd heard they had them here!) to pick up a real Western breakfast. Coffee (coffee!), french toast, a newspaper in my hand and, strangely enough, the Oscars on the television.

I appreciated Mumbai for the food: pizza (not the best, but passable), the first chicken I'd had in a month, brownies, western-style sandwiches and pasta and, of course, breakfasts. A "grocery store" where I could buy Cheddar cheese (well, sort of) and walnuts, strangely enough the two food items I had be craving the most. All the foods were pale imitations of their western counterparts, but after a month and a half of all Indian food all the time, it was like manna from heaven.

I met an amazing group of girls at the hostel where I was staying, and for the first time in awhile, felt like I had a real group of friends...if only for a few days. We toured the city, shared laughter and swapped stories over meals, caught a few Bollywood flicks and even tried our hand at "dressing up" and going to one of the famed Bombay clubs.

The markets and bazaars where hectic, crazy, even a little scary. I learned to haggle. I learned to tell someone off, and mean it enough that they'd actually leave me a lone. I spent one day with a girl I'd met in the hostel (Jo), learning to take the public train system (the same one that got bombed) to the 'non-touristy' parts of the city, getting amazingly lost but having a great time. The hawkers were pushy: they would surround us, block our paths, not let us through, until we either bought something or caused a real scene. We were on the lookout for a "sporting goods store" -- I wanted a new Nalgene to replace the one I'd lost, and she was looking for some camping gear. It ended up being a small office where the owner had a bunch of equipment in boxes...you told him what you wanted and he got it out for you! (Sadly, there were no fancy water bottles; the seller informed me that 'in India they like to use cheap bottles" and held up a disposable plastic drinking bottle. )

One evening, Jo & I went to Chowpatty Beach, a famous evening hang-out. Chowpatty is famous for its "Bhelpuri," a snack made with puffed rice, onions, lemon, cilantro, some other stuff...and a sauce...tastier than it sounds, I promise. When you head to the food area, the vendors literally MOB you. We had at least 20 people shouting at us "bhel puri, bhel puri" - here madam - come here - over here...one guy whipped out a table and chair for us...and then we realized they didn't even sell bhelpuri at that shop. We finally managed to escape the mob and find a place to sit, but it was one of those distinctly Indian chaotic, hilarious situations.

(Chowpatty is also known for its "Head Massagers" - vaguely creepy and incredibly persistent men that will come up to you offering a "very good head massage" for some number of rupees. We both passed -- what sort of qualifications do you need to be a head massager, anyway?)

In Mumbai the young men all ride around on their motorbikes, yapping into their cell phones. The woman, at least those with money, are dressed to kill. There is money here, big money. And yet there is so much poverty. The city is filled with huge slums; the railroad tracks are inevitably lined with these pockets of extreme poverty. (Catch a morning train through the city, and you can see the people lined up, using the dykes of the train tracks as their restroom, sacrificing their privacy, carrying out their morning ablutions in open view, because they've nowhere else to do it.)

I came across the following line in a news story:

The people who live in small houses at the side of the track came out to help the injured, too. They carried sheets and saris out for makeshift stretchers and took water to the injured.

What the article doesn't point out that many people living in these slums only have one sheet, one spare sari. They brought out what may have been one of their only possessions and gave them over willingly, knowing that there would not be stretchers, knowing that these supplies were needed to get the injured to hospitals.

Mumbai claws at you. It will not let you be. Even back in your hotel room, the sounds carry from this city that does not sleep. It seduces you with its promise of making it big (attractive young men and women travel from across India in the hopes of being cast in a Bollywood Blockbuster; the down-on-their-luck come from all over their country in the hopes of finding fortune in the country's financial capital) and then refuses to let you fall to your knees, even if you think you haven't got anything left.

The articles in the press have been filled with tales of Mumbai's resilience, it's indomitable spirit, it's refusal to be cowed or to be slowed. Mumbai has weathered attacks like these before, massive flooding, natural disasters, civil unrest...and it's always back to work the next day.

And I know in my heart it's all true; of any city I've ever been to, I cannot see this city being stopped.

Channeling Dean Moriarty

2006-07-11T22:42:00.000-04:00

I spent the Fourth of July weekend having a wonderful mini-vacation in Martha's Vineyard, full of biking, relaxing on beaches, more biking, lighthouse-spotting, shell collecting, seafood eating (mmm mmmm mmm) and a little more biking. I wanted to write up a posting and maybe put up some pictures from the trip all last week, but some combination of low energy and post-trip blues kept me tied up in bloggers block.

Before the moment is lost entirely (though I fear it may already be gone), I'd like to do that. I hate when I have an inspiration -- something I madly want to get down on paper (so to speak) and have half composed in my head -- and don't get around to actually typing it. Soon enough, that magic is gone...and when I try to return to a topic, try to re-capture that initial burst of passion and energy, it's really an abject failure.

Type now, I need to remember, or forever lose your thoughts.

I wanted to write about the magic of travel. How incredibly good it felt to fill up my pack, strap it on my back, put on my Chacos, and hit the road. How much I relished the maps and bus schedules, the ever-changing itineraries and unexpected pleasures (and setbacks) on every corner. How I loved sleeping in a dormitory hostel again, using my sarong as a towel, meeting people from all over the world over breakfast.

I miss traveling. I miss making my schedule up as I go along. I miss meeting new people and dealing with new challenges. I miss being a little bit dirty (travel dust, you know) and a little bit unfashionable. I miss getting plenty of physical activity just from moving from one place to another in the course of a day (walking, biking, carrying a heavy pack) instead of going to the gym. I miss laying on a beach all day, having time to think. Or not think. Or whatever. But having that time and space just for me.

I think about India every day. (Side note: there was another bombing today, this time in Mumbai. Lots more on that subject; I'll try to write about that tomorrow.) I met an amazing couple from India at the hostel, actually, and I could not shut up about how much I loved the country for at least half an hour. We spent hours (perhaps boring my traveling companion, I fear, though she was a good sport) talking about cities they were from and I had visited...Restaurants, roads, customs, stories. I want so desperately to go back. I want that freedom again.

So it was good for me to get away and leave the city; it was good for me to get out of my routine just a little bit. Four days was far too short, but it was enough to both calm the jittery travel bug inside me for a little longer and, at the same time, whet my appetite for more.

E for Effort

2006-07-10T13:14:00.000-04:00

I learned something new and important about myself this weekend.

I am a good waterskiier. I have a talent for waterskiing. You might even go so far as to call me a natural.

On my fourth try ever, I managed to get up on the skies and zoom along behind the boat all over the lake. Wakes were no match for my prowess. (Well, at least for a few minutes.) It was all surprisingly easy...and incredibly fun.

Lest you think my ego is out of hand here, let me back up and explain just why this is such a ground-breaking, confidence-boosting unexpected phenomena in my life.

You see, I suck at sports. Seriously. I'm bad at them. I lack the coordination, I lack the talent, I lack the drive, and I often lack the physical ability. I'm a terrible runner. I can't throw, I can't catch, I can't hit the ball, I can't make a basket. It's embarrassing, and I try, as much as possible, to avoid situations in which I'll out myself as the klutzy non-athlete that I am.

When I was in second grade, I won a paper certificate for being able to do the third most situps in a minute (32, for the record) of all the girls in my class. I treasured that certificate - my only athletic award - for years. I based my identity around "being good at sit-ups." (For the record, I'm not. I lost that skill long ago.)

Playing sports as a child was often a traumatizing experience. I will not soon forget the time when I was 12 and at softball practice, and couldn't hit the ball. I'll not forget the embarrassment of standing at the plate in the hot sun, whiffing at one ball after another, my face getting redder and redder, for well over half an hour, my coach insistent that no one quit until they'd made contact with the ball at least once. I'll not forget my teammates - those bitchy 12 year old girls for whom athletic ability came naturally -- and their snickers, their exasperated sighs as I swung, and missed, yet again, their eye-rolls and exchanged glances, their snarky comments later at the bench.

I'll not forget my summer soccer league at age 15 -- that community sports program that was supposed to be all about "having fun" and "learning the game" and "getting exercise." Except, of course, the team was coached by the Varsity soccer coach and filled with all the soccer team girls. In other words, we took our community soccer league awfully seriously.

My fifteen year old self wanted so badly to be, if not befriended, at least accepted by that click of oh-so-popular soccer girls. Step one: I had to have the right clothing. So I saved up my baby-sitting money and bought a pair of Umbro shorts (because everyone wore Umbros) and a beautiful pair of blue $60 Adidas -- about three times more expensive than any shoe I had every owned. I loved those Adidas. I spent weeks picking out the perfect pair of sneakers at the store. Once I had them, I couldn't stop peaking in at the box every few minutes on my way home. This was the way to social acceptance: a pair of blue Adidas sneakers and some Umbros shorts.

On the first day of practice, I was made fun of for not having cleats. Sixty-dollar Adidas notwithstanding, I still had the wrong shoes.

My summer soccer experience did not get much better from there. One memorable low point: the time I tried to stop a ball soaring through the sky with my chest -- the way all the other girls did it -- and ended up getting knocked to the ground because I caught it in the jaw instead. Oh, everyone got a good laugh out of that one.

Other athletic experiences were not much better. I couldn't make the basketball team in 7th grade - despite the coach's warnings that having a good attitude was more important than skill, and I know I had a far better attitude than most of those girls on the team -- because I made exactly 0 out of 20 free throw attempts. I was usually among the last to be picked for teams in gym. In fact, if anything, I developed a real talent for avoiding as much physical activity as possible in gym class. I am a grade-A bench sitter.

With all of that history behind me, you'll understand, I hope, if I brag about my waterskiing just a little. If I take a little pride at being unexpectedly good at something that seems to require some physical ability. If I relish the feeling of being, for one afternoon, better than almost everyone else in the group at a sporting activity.

Take that, you nasty girls of my childhood. Take that.

I Think I'm in Love...

2006-07-05T16:51:00.000-04:00

with the Prime Minister of Japan.

Yeah, okay, so he's a little on the older side.

And yeah, okay, his politics aren't the best.

But the man keeps his hair long and rakish while leading a country known for its adherence to conformity. And he has an unwavering love for Elvis, as demonstrated at this weekend' s media/state events at Graceland with Bush this weekend.

Oh, Koizumi. I had a crush on you before, it's true.

But when busted out the Elvis sunglasses, swiveled your hips, belted your rendition of "Love Me Tender," and put that awkward, embarrassed look on Bush's face, I knew it was true love.

Sender's Remorse

2006-06-30T12:48:00.000-04:00

Those of you who know me well know that I hate confrontation. Don't like it, avoid it at (almost) all causes, sometimes get physically ill thinking about it. For whatever reason, I have such a strong desire for things to "be okay" that I put up with way more than I ought to in order to achieve that "okayness" in a relationship, even if I know deep down things aren't actually okay.

It's something I don't really like about myself, and I'm actively working on getting better at it. Regular (ha!) readers of this blog might recall that I recently got some positive reinforcement to stand up for myself more often after I got a little confrontational with the Moroccan. Events like those help, but it's a steep uphill path for me.

Actually, I would imagine this might come as surprise to those who know me less well. I think I come off as a pretty assertive person in my day to day life. I'll speak up on behalf of someone else without thinking twice. I've got no issues speaking my mind at work or in academic situations, so long as the issue is business, not personal. (This is part of the reason I think I may make a better staffer than candidate). I enjoy a challenging and even combative dinner party discussion and love to argue about big picture ideas. But as soon as a conflict borders on affecting a personal relationship, I lose all my nerve.

I express myself best through writing, and I can be at my bravest when I use the metaphorical pen and paper as a shield, Thus, those few times I manage to confront someone about a personal problem I'm having with them, it's usually via email. (Yeah, I know. Probably not the most mature way of doing it.)

Almost immediately after I send such an email, however, I am gripped with what I call 'sender's remorse.' It's an almost instantaneous, uncontrollable reaction: my stomach clenches up, I start to feel shaky, I immediately wish I had not pushed send. I re-read the email obsessively, trying to determine how the person will react, hoping they don't read anger into the lines (even if it was felt), hoping they can hear the love and affection in my voice behind what may seem like harsh words. And then I wait anxiously for a response -- hoping for some words of reassurance that everything is okay. That I didn't just blow up a friendship for no good reason at all.

So should you ever be on the receiving end of a harsh-seeming email from me, know that chances are good that either a) I didn't mean it the way it seems, or, b) I'm currently waiting, nauseous and distraught, to hear back from you.

Please be gentle.

You're Really Not That Busy, Are You?

2006-06-26T21:22:00.000-04:00

There was an interesting article in this Sunday's Globe magazine. For whatever reason, the Coupling section at the back -- normally a vaguely annoying column directed at single thirtysomethings -- really hit me hard this week. The author was talking about a failed romance, a potential relationship that died because neither of them could find the time to see each other. After an initially promising first meeting, they spent six weeks playing email tag, planning and canceling dates, always being "awfully busy this week," until finally they fell out of contact. In so many words, she asks the question, "Why are we so concerned with appearing to be a 'busy' person that we fail to make time to see the people we want to see?"

Why, indeed? I think it's a great question.

Why is it so important that we are always "busy" -- or at least give off the appearance of such? Why are we afraid of appearing as if we aren't living a life that is overflowing with social engagements and exciting plans? Why are we worried about seeming like we are too eager to see someone?

And what's wrong with being eager to see someone? Why do we wait to email someone back, or to return a phone call? What's with the 'two day rule?' Why do we assume that if we appear to like someone "too much," to be too excited about their company, that we will look desperate, pathetic, like someone with no life? Someone that isn't, well, busy?

What is so scary about the phrase "I've got time for you:?

This mostly applies to potential romantic relationships, but friendships aren't immune to this phenomenon. I get the "my schedule is really insane this week" from friends all the time, and I've certainly given it out from time to time. Oh, sure, sometimes our schedules really are insane...but why is it so important that we communicate this fact? And how often are we really so busy that we can't find time for a drink?

There have been times in friendships when I've felt taken for granted. As the "less busy" friend, I have felt like I was always the one making time for the friendship, like I was always the one conforming to their schedule. Sometimes I've been tempted to pull out the 'oh i'm so busy i've got x, y, z, and q to do and I just can't see you tonight' line, just to make it clear that I have a life, too. That they aren't the only one who is busy.

There's power in being the busier person. Even the closest friendships are not immune to these societal conventions, these silly games.

But the fact is, if we really, really want to see someone, we see them. We find time in our oh-so-busy schedules. We drop other, less important plans and obligations - things like laundry, or sleep, or even plans with other people. We email them back right away. We return their call as soon as we can.

And if a friend really needs to see us or talk to us, we find them time. Suddenly we have an hour for a phone conversation when an hour previously did not exist. Suddenly whatever we are doing is not so important, or at least not as important as the friend who needs us.

So if we can make this time for other people when it's really important - whether to them or to us - why do we have such a hard time doing it when it isn't as pressing? (Or when we don't want it to seem as pressing?)

I think we need a re-evaluation of what we believe is important, of what we should value in ourselves and others. Instead of being known as the friend that is always busy, always on the go, maybe we should consider the value of being known for other things.

"What I love about Melissa is that she is always willing to make time for me. She's never too busy when I need her."

or, perhaps,

"The great thing about Melissa is that I always feel like I'm one of her top priorities."

Doesn't that sound nice? Even when I really am insanely busy...even when my life is so crazed that I don't have time to sleep or eat, much less meet up for a drink...I think I'd like to be that friend.

From here on out, I've always got time for you, babe.

Except, wow, this week is really crazy. Can we try for next?

Grace is Overrated

2006-06-23T11:30:00.000-04:00

Junior year of college, I went through the soul-crushing, ego draining, self-esteem decimating process of applying for a Truman Scholarship.

As a point of reference, this process generally involves:

1) Six months puffing yourself up to the point that you feel not only worthy of applying, but highly deserving of the fellowship,
2) A month or two of filling out paper work and writing essays designed to make you look like you are the most talented, ambitious, altruistic, "going-places" person in the world, self-promotional to the point of gagging while appearing inhumanly modest,
3) A month of having professors you respect rip your application, your resume, your personal goals, and your own personality to shreds, brushing off everything you've ever done as insufficient and immaterial, and then rebuilding your application into one that fits the mold of a "Truman Scholar" regardless of how much it actually reflects you,
4) An excruciating month of waiting to see if you are chosen as a Finalist,
5) Another excruciating month of preparing for the Finalist interview if you were so "lucky" as to make the cut. (This month is similar to step 4, except now the professors ask even more personal questions and then rip your answers apart to your face),
6) One fun day of feeling awfully special and important because you are a Finalist for a Truman Scholarship,
7) Two weeks of feeling absolutely certain that you rocked the interview and that you'll soon be getting that special letter from Madelaine Albright informing you of your winning status,
And, in my case,
8) A good long month of feeling like a complete and total loser. Because, you know, at least in the eyes of the Truman Committee, you were. (Despite all their rhetoric about 'everyone being a winner' and 'just being a Finalist is a great honor,' fact is, you either leave with $40,000 and a title...or you don't.)

Right. So I went through that long, fun, 'character-building' process my junior year. When it was all over, my advisor took me out to lunch (consolation prize, I suppose.) At the end of it, he looked me in the eye and told me that I had handled the process, and all the accompanying rejection, 'with a lot of grace.' My parents, he said, had done well.

That was it, but coming from a man whose opinion of me was incredibly, incredibly important to me at the time, it meant a whole lot. I may have been a Truman-loser, but I had grace.

I think of being a graceful loser as one of those marks of character that separate the wheat from the chaff...right up there with people who do good works anonymously without hope of credit, those who keep obligations they've made even if no one expects them to, and those who speak up for what is right even though they will personally be worse off for having done so. So it meant a lot when someone I respected complimented me on a character trait I've always aspired to have.

All of that said...

Lately, I've felt like I've had a lot of opportunity to show my grace off. (Granted, showing off your grace may well be an oxymoron.) I've applied for -- and lost out on -- enough fellowships and jobs in the last few years to have gotten awfully, awfully good at taking rejection well. I'm a regular pro at it.

And you know, I'm a little tired of it. I think I've learned that lesson well now. I'm ready for luck to turn a little in my favor. I'm ready to learn to win with grace. And I don't even need to get credit or recognition for being good at it...I'll be more than happy to just take the win for once.

Is This What I've Been Doing Wrong All These Years?

2006-06-20T22:51:00.000-04:00

I learned a valuable lesson tonight.

Act like a bitch; get treated like a princess.

So there's this guy I've been seeing, off and on, mostly off, but around when either of us gets bored, for the last six months or so. It's sort of silly, really, but he is *awfully* attractive. And, you know, Moroccan. (That often being his saving grace. When in doubt, blame it all on 'cultural differences'!)

He's been off in Morocco for a few weeks, and I've been busy with other pursuits, so we haven't seen each other in awhile. We were planning to get together tonight, but he was being a bit of an ass about various things. This being a rather casual relationship (or something), I've put up with a fair amount of shit because I didn't feel like dealing with it. But tonight I was a bit irritated, and I decided to call him on it. And I wasn't exactly, um, nice about it.

And all of a sudden, I'm transported into some fantasy world. He's apologizing for being an ass, buying me dinner, attending to my every need (including those I didn't know I had), practically waiting on me, acting incredibly sweet, giving me gifts he'd gotten me in Morocco (gotten specifically for me? Somehow I doubt it, but I played along), and generally treating me like a princess. I don't know that I've ever been treated quite so well.

What?!

Is this truly the lesson I should take from all of this? Call someone on their shit, and suddenly they treat you a 1000 times better? Be a bit nasty if you'd like them to start being nice? All these years of being incredibly kind, of putting up with all sorts of shit, of understanding, understanding, and understanding some more...and it comes down to this? Be a big bitch and get what you want?

God damn. I am sure I will never, ever understand men.

You Can't Make This Shit Up

2006-06-14T09:12:00.000-04:00

According to Colleen Graffy, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy (take note, they've put this woman in charge of public diplomacy), the recent suicides at Guantanomo was a "good PR move."

Wait, let's not take her out of context here. The full quote: "Taking their own lives was not necessary but it certainly is a good PR move to draw attention," she said.

I work in P.R. Suicide? Nope, not a recommended option. There's that whole matter of....your relationship with the public doesn't really mean a whole lot if you're DEAD. Just, you know, for starters.

The suicides at Guantanomo may or may not have been a good PR move (I vote no, but that's just my opinion), but I can tell you what a really, really bad PR move looks like...letting this woman anywhere near a microphone.

The Grand March

2006-06-12T21:47:00.000-04:00

I am not a “march” person. I am not a marcher.

This is what I discovered about myself this weekend. I don’t like marches. Good causes, bad causes, productive, self-indulgent, whatever the reason, whatever the outcome, I don’t much care. I don’t like to march.

It seems like I *ought* to like to march. I like political causes. I like groups of people. I like catchy slogans. I like walking. So presumably, I might like to walk with a group of people while yelling catchy slogans about a political cause. Right?

Yeah, not so much.

I “discovered” this trait of mine this weekend, when I made a valiant (but ultimately failed) attempt to attend Dyke March for Boston Pride Weekend with my friend. She assured me it was lots of fun. Lots of good people, lots of good energy. So I tried. Sort of. Actually, I dreaded it all week, and then bailed to go see a movie with a different friend before the march even began. Oops.

Actually, I’ve always suspected this about myself. As much as I might love the song “Solidarity Forever,” I’m not much into solidarity. Or rallies. Or protests (sacrilege! An Obie that doesn’t like protests!). I’ve walked picket lines because I think they’re both important and effective (far more so than most protests), but I can’t say I totally enjoy it. (Actually, I really enjoyed the time I walked the picket line with my father when I was 12 because he bought me candy & hot chocolate. But that was back in an era when I could be bribed to do just about anything for a box of Nerds.)

There’s this great passage in Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being about The Grand March. (I know; I quote this book endlessly. If you haven’t read it, I insist that you do. Slowly. 10 pages at a time, at most. With lots of time to think. It will absolutely blow your mind.)

But back to The Grand March. Kundera writes a great deal about the meaning of words, and how one phrase or concept can mean entirely different things to two people because of their different life experiences, and how this inability to exchange meaning inhibits communication. (A concept that deserves an entirely separate posting, but that’s for another time.)

In the novel, Franz loved protests and parades. He was a researcher and spent most of his time in the university; thus, he loved being out in the open air with others in his spare time. He “saw the marching shouting crowd as the image of Europe and its history. Europe was the Grand March. The march from revolution to revolution, from struggle to struggle, ever onward.”

Sabina was a refugee from the Czech republic, and she had been forced to attend parades her entire life. She hated parades. In her mind, there was a basic evil behind totalitarianism, and “that image of evil was a parade of people marching by with raised fists and shouting identical syllables in unison.”

I don’t know why I reference these passages, except that I couldn’t get the concept of the Grand March out of my mind all week. The concept of marching simply to march. Of the March being the goal, and the cause only secondary. Of my instinctive distaste of shouting slogans in unison with a group of people, regardless of how much I agree with the slogans.

Scammed Again

2006-06-09T14:27:00.000-04:00

This morning I heard a story on NPR about "Continuous Contraception", or taking birth control pills straight through to avoid getting your period. Apparently, some manufacturers are (finally) coming out with prescription birth control pills that will, officially, in an FDA approved sort of way, do what millions of women -- and OB/GYNS -- do all the time...use their birth control to have some control over the timing and frequency of their menstrual cycle.

As much as I think that's a great development -- about f'ing time! -- that wasn't what got me going. The story also mentioned that when developers were first releasing the Pill, giving women "monthly bleeding" (their words) was a marketing decision.

A marketing decision! In other words, a few decades ago some guys up in sales decided we women simply wouldn't know what to do if we didn't have a period every month. It wasn't a health decision; there was no research to suggest that not having a monthly period could have adverse affects (despite what has been implied all these years). Nope, it was a marketing decision. What woman in her right mind would go on the Pill if it meant giving up her monthly joy, after all?

I don't suppose they might have tried, say, talking to a few women. A poll, perhaps. Focus groups. Nope, the guys in sales know what is best, after all.

Not to be that angry chick, but I am so ridiculously tired of old white men thinking they know what's best for me & my body. I feel scammed. I feel cheated. I feel outraged.

The FDA finally approved the Cervical Cancer Vaccine. For awhile, it looked as though that was going to get blocked for political reasons...apparently, getting the vaccine was going to encourage women to be more promiscuous (cervical cancer is usually caused by the incredibly common HPV, which is transmitted through sexual contact). Never mind AIDS and a whole host of other diseases...a vaccine to help prevent cancer is certainly going to encourage me to rush out and sleep around. (Did I mention they were thinking of blocking a vaccine that would prevent CANCER?)

This all stems from the same general attitude: god forbid we give women the resources to take care of their own bodies. God forbid we give them all the options available and allow them to make their own choices: to have their period, or not; to sleep around, or not.

I just want to find one of these guys and say to them "Stop thinking you know what's best for me. You don't."

A little rage...always good to get the blood flowing.

(Just re-read this posting; that final double entendre was not intentional!)

Uncle

2006-06-07T20:41:00.000-04:00

A week ago I wrote a posting about how I was actively seeking intense experiences and life changes. Today I'm ready to throw up my hands and call Uncle. Please, some sanity. Please, some space. Not so fast. Not so much.

What is it about me that I am constantly wavering back and forth, seeking and shunning stability in the same breath? One day I'm looking for change for the sake of change; the next day I'm desperately clinging to anything that feels unmovable.

I remember back in the days of Unemployment (oh, the humility learned! Oh the depths of despair and self-doubt to which I didn't know I could drop!), I wrote a paragraph somewhere about craving stability. Craving health care and 401-Ks and a steady paycheck and a predictable commute. I was jumping from temporary job to temporary job, never quite sure how I was going to make rent, unsure of who I was or why I was here in Boston or what exactly Plan C was going to be, since Plan A was a failure and Plan B wasn't working much better. And then I got a job, and health care, and dental, and a steady paycheck and a predictable commute and constant hours and all the rest.

And I was bored. Not at first, no, but after a few months...I was ready for changes. Ready for new challenges and new adventures. Loathing my newfound stability.

See, this is the thing I don't understand about myself. I cycle through major life changes like they're going out of style, and then I bemoan the transitory nature of my existence.

(I like that phrase. I use it a lot. "The transitory nature of my existence.")

I want everything to change. I want something to stay the same. And I want them both at the same time.

I revel in the thrill of moving; I philosophize about the inherent beauty in packing and wandering...and then I lose it when I find out I might have to move again, only 3 months after settling into my new JP digs.

I'm juggling job possibilities in the air, hoping to keep at least one of them from crashing to the ground, thrilled that I might, *might* (not to jinx myself - might) have the chance to move onto something more fulfilling and challenging...and then I flip out over the prospect of having (once again) to readjust my budget, my schedule, my commute, my relationships, the way I live my life.

I bounce from dating prospect to dating prospect, tearing through potential loves-of-my-life like I'm at an 'all-you-can-eat' buffet and I am hungry. Swallowing the endings before I've had a chance to take a deep breath and truly savor the beginnings. Spinning plates in the air and wondering how many I can keep, and how many I'll break. And how many will break me.

Oh, I dramatize this all, milking my own little existential crises just for the joy of prose. (These would be awfully boring postings if I didn't.) My life isn't really all this chaotic. And I have a feeling I'm not the only one going through these constant re-evaluations, this jumping back and forth between wanting to be tied down a little and wanting to cut the strings. I sort of wish I could get some confirmation from those older, successful, seemingly happy people whose lives and successes I'd like to emulate that they went through this, too. That it's normal to agonize and analyze and wonder if you're on the right path every, oh, two weeks or so. That I can be a little lost (just a little!) now but end up found at the end.

But I guess if I got that confirmation, I'd simply have to find some new, unique, all-my-own crisis to contend with. Having the same crises as the generations before you is awfully unoriginal.

Vocabulary Lesson for Senator Brownback

2006-06-06T16:42:00.000-04:00

In the interests of promoting proper grammar/word usage, political activism and snarky but clever harrassment of anti-gay bigots (three of my favorite topics!), I'd like to direct you to this posting over at Disinterest & Ennui if you haven't seen it already.

Absolutely brilliant.

An addendum: slightly less loathing

2006-06-02T10:16:00.000-04:00

My dear friend R. took me to task for some of the language I used in my previous posting. She pointed out, and legitimately so, that my derogative use of the term "politically correct" in the same way that conservative writers use it -- i.e. to brand any discussion of power and language as a trivial, unnecessary waste of time -- is, well, unhelpful. By adopting their tone and allowing them to define the meaning of the word, I'm giving credence to their way of thinking.

I think it's a powerful argument -- worthy at least of consideration. So, R. , I'm considering it.

I believe strongly in the incredible power that language holds, and while I sometimes am annoyed by the dithering and nitpicking that goes on about terminology, I won't deny that language can be revolutionary. (If I ever get around to applying to PhD programs, I imagine that my research is going to center around issues of language, communication, issue definition and political power.) How we define an issue, the words we use to refer to people or groups, the linguistic context in which we form an argument...all of these things are incredibly potent. Anyone who has ever done work with surveys know that changing the words we use can have a marked effect on someone's opinion.

And I think R. was correct in pointing out that many discussions that are often labeled derisively as politically correct bullshit are actually really important to have. As much as it may occasionally annoy the hell out of me, we do need to talk about institutional racism, heteronormativity, sexist language, and any other systematic ways our society has developed off oppressing various groups of people.

But. But.

Here's the point I was trying, and perhaps failed, to make in my previous posting:

I am an incredibly privileged white girl. I come from a stable, middle-class background. I went to an elite midwest school where I was essentially taught that I got lucky -- and that it is my duty to help those that weren't quite so fortunate as I. (Yeah, I totally ate all that stuff up with a spoon. And while I truly do believe the sentiment, it's a pretty damn elitist way of stating it.) Oh, sure, I struggle with the massive amount of debt I incurred while in my little liberal arts haven, and sure, I have from time to time felt the forces of patriarchal oppression working against me. But let's get real, here - the fact remains that I am one privileged, privileged girl.

As are most of (not all! but most) of those liberals that spend their time trying to get their town councils to vote to impeach Bush or pester me on the street about saving the whales...or spend most of their time talking about institutional oppression.

We have time to sit around talking about all these meta-issues, because all these causes we fight for and these policies we rail against...well, let's be honest, they don't affect our daily lives all that much. The war in Iraq? Yeah, I'm against it. But what effect does that truly have on my day to day life? Entering the service was never even an option in my mind. I don't know anyone serving in Iraq. I don't even drive a car, so while I'm sure the oil prices affected my pocketbook in some ways, it's not restricting my movement.

Bush's economic policies? Yeah, totally against those. And I suppose the recession might have had something to do with the fact that it took me so damn long to get a job...but I sort of think there's a finite supply of political jobs of the sort I was looking for. And as much as I bemoan the cutting of all those social service programs...again, the lack of funding just doesn't change my life in any obvious ways.

Basically, what I'm trying in an incredibly long-winded way to say is this: I think we, as progressives, ought to channel our energies into practical victories - like winning elections and passing legislation -- because these are the ways we can most immediately make change and help people that need it. And while it's all well and good for us to talk about the bigger picture and strive for systematic changes, we can afford to do that because we don't need help right now.

But other people do.

(And if that wasn't the most earnest sounding posting you've read in awhile...well, you need to hang out with some more cynical people.)

Shake, shake, shake, shake, shake

2006-06-01T16:49:00.000-04:00

Good things come to those who wait?

I don't want to jinx it by saying anything more, but I just received two really good, and generally unrelated, phone calls....phone calls I had just given up on ever receiving. Right in a row, one after the other. I don't understand the timing, but I'm not complaining.

When you start shaking things up, you never know what's going to come out. Momentum begets momentum, or maybe I'm just overdue for some good karma. Either way, I feel some life changes coming on...and wow, does it feel good.

Liberal self-loathing

2006-06-01T10:42:00.000-04:00

Liberals drive me nuts.

There. I said it.

This is a bit problematic, of course, since I'm a liberal. About as bleeding-heart as they come. As are the vast majority of my friends. I take pride in the label. I take pride in the values I believe we stand for.

But good lord, I've got to say it. If I see one more tie-dye clad, protesting lib calling for, say, the impeachment of the President, or resigning their post over a commencement speech, or pestering me to sign some petition to save the whales, I'm going to lose it.

Why have we become the party of ineffectual action, lost causes, mixed (or non-existent) messaging, and i'm-more-liberal-than-you infighting? Why, for the love of god, can we simply not get our shit together?

As much as I might love to see it happen, the President is not going to be impeached by a Republican Congress. (And if a Democratic Congress does it as one of their first moves, I'm betting we won't have a Democratic Congress for long). And while it's nice that you're making your opinions heard, Brookline, is it really possible that you have no other problems you could work on in a constructive way with that time?

I agree whole-heartedly with BC students and faculty not wanting their institution to award Condoleeza Rice with an honorary degree. But a self-righteous letter to the Globe resigning your position as an adjunct professor? Oh, that's going to do a lot of good.

And I hate to break it to you, but elected officials rarely, if ever, even see those well-meaning save the whale petitions. Those stupid postcards you want me to sign? They're sorted by interns into massive bins in the mail room, never to be seen again. (I know. I was that intern. I sorted those useless postcards).

I think it's great that people are standing up for what they believe in and trying to make a difference. Seriously, I do. I just wish the people on my side could try channeling their energies towards efforts that might actually make a difference. I just wish we could stop running around being so politically correct that we end up sounding like loonies to anyone even remotely in mainstream America (where, by the way, most of the voters are). I wish we could stop giving the conservatives so much freaking ammunition.

I just wish we could get our shit together, just a little bit, and win an election.
Is that really so much to ask?

Playing with Fire/Shake it Up, Baby

2006-05-30T18:58:00.000-04:00

I'm playing with fire.

I'm hanging out just at the edge of "not such a great idea." I'm caught up in a game I know better than to play, but I'm playing it anyway. I'm intoxicated by the danger, the excitement, the possibility of a coming fall, that feeling of vertigo, that slim hope of a redemption, whatever redemption may be.

I'm holding my hands over the flame, and I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I'm going to end up with scorched fingers. So why do it? I don't really know -- except that sometimes it feels so good to know that you can still feel that pain, that your skin hasn't gone numb.

Masochistic? Some might deem it such. Personally, I think it's got nothing to do with that. It's not about pain, it's about intensity. It's not about feeling bad -- or about feeling good -- but about knowing you can feel strongly at all.

I'm on a quest to pack as many intense experiences into my life as I can. Maybe when I'm old, I'll look back on that desire as a folly of youth. Maybe it's reckless and immature to think that's a wise way to live a life. But right now, I can think of nothing more worthwhile than to know every experience, every emotion, every situation I can.

I had a conversation with a friend the other day. I was making a joke about red wine hangovers - that terrible headache that comes with too much tannins - and she said that she'd never had a hangover. I've had enough bad ones in my day not to wish them on any soul -- except. Except, I found myself making the argument that I was glad to have had hangovers, of all varieties, because now I know what they are like. I argued that I thought it was important to my growth as a person to know what that level of drunk, and that level of post-drink regret, feel like, if only to be able to relate to others who have also had that experience. I argued that I was glad to have experienced food poisoning, and a car accident, and any other host of other awful, but temporary, things, because now I know what they are. I don't know if I actually believe my own argument - it did feel like one of those times I find myself taking a position simply to see where it goes - but I'm thinking about it. I somehow think there's a core of truth in all of that.

My life has been overdue for a good shaking. The little snow crystals have long since settled in, and it's time to flip the globe around and let them fall once more. I worry about too much stability. I worry about inertia, about slowing, about settling. I don't know if I'm simply more prone to it than most -- and thus feel the need to be continually on my guard about it -- or if I just fear it more than most.

My usual mode of operation is to pack my bags and set off somewhere else. I like to move, and I get antsy when I stay somewhere more than six months. I like the leaving. It shakes everything up. Makes me figure it all out all over again. I've been in Boston almost nine months now. That's a big deal to me. I like it here. I think I'm going to stay, at least for awhile. And I sort of think it might be a good idea for me to learn to stay in a place for more than a year. But it does mean I've got to figure out other ways to throw myself off-kilter every now and then.

So it feels good to be shaken. To be flipped around for awhile, and not to be sure what the landing will look like. And not to really care till I get there.

Nothing more, nothing less. It feels good to be shaken.

Loose Lips Sink Ships

2006-05-26T13:33:00.000-04:00

Money quote of the day, from The Toronto Star... and about a billion other papers:

Bush uncharacteristically did not hesitate when asked about mistakes he had made since the March 2003 invasion.

"Saying `bring it on,'" he said, in reference to an ill-advised taunt to Iraqi insurgents in the summer of 2003.

"The kind of tough talk, you know, that sent the wrong signal to people. You know, I learned some lessons about expressing myself in maybe a little more sophisticated manner ... `wanted dead or alive,' that kind of talk."

Really? So he's learned that maybe, just maybe, before he goes shooting off his mouth cowboy style, he ought to think a little about what consequences his words might have on the rest of the world? Like, you know, that he might inspire insurgents to try harder to kill American troops in Iraq?

For all the BS about Democrats not "supporting our troops," I can't think of a single Democrat that has dared the world to try and hurt them. Bring it on, indeed, Mr. President...it's not like it's your body, or those of your daughters, on the front line, is it?

Well, at least he's learned his lesson.

Insert Ponderous Question Here

2006-05-22T22:25:00.000-04:00

I just got done watching a few back episodes of Sex & The City…a guilty pleasure after a long, responsible Monday. Writing a blog posting after watching the show gets me a little self-conscious, however…inevitably, there’s the writing scene in every S&TC: Carrie poised at her laptop, hair perfectly tousled, staring off to the side with a look of introspection…and then she turns back to her keyboard to type the punch phrase of the night, “insert ponderous question that has the air and tone of being deep without actually achieving it here.” Whenever I write a posting, I’m a little afraid that’s going to be me.

But tonight I’m being ponderous and introspective, my heart filled with angst and Big Questions, ready to type out my deep thought of the evening (the wine that goes with S&TC viewing helps). Maybe if I’m self-mocking about it all, it won’t seem so contrived.

I turn back to the keyboard, and I write:
“When is something – or someone – worth fighting for?” (Cue music here).

Let’s see how much back story I can give out without giving away the proverbial cow (why call me when you can get the milk for free?) We’ll try generalities.

I’ve always been the type to give people space, freedom to do whatever it is they need to do. You want time? You’ve got time. Afraid to commit? No commitment needed. Someone on the side? Just don’t tell me about it. If I’m too young to be tied down – and I am – then I’m certainly too young to do any tying. I think people need what they need, and when they’re in their twenties, they may need to be selfish. Or confused. Or indecisive. Or whatever. Perhaps at my expense. But, then, sometimes I’ve probably been, or will probably be, selfish or confused or indecisive or whatever at someone else’s expense. It works out. If there’s anything I fear in a relationship, it’s holding someone else back.

I’m also pretty direct. If I like you…within a reasonably short period of time, I’ll say so. I’ve never seen the point of tip-toeing around things like that. (Thrill of the chase, blah blah blah. I’m just not so into that.) I think it’s always good to tell someone when you feel positively towards them. Even if they may not reciprocate, I’m sure it somehow makes the world a better place. (Doesn’t it make your day, just a little bit, if you find out someone is into you, even if you don’t feel the same? Especially if they make it clear that they have no expectations, that they just wanted you to know?)

So combine the two and you get this: when someone I like tells me they’re not sure, that they need time, that they’re not ready, I back off. Way off. I tell them to take their time, take their space. They know how I feel, and if they decide I’m what they want, they know where to find me. And that’s that. They know where to find me.

But let’s be honest, that hasn’t always worked so well.

Which brings me to tonight’s question: When is something – or someone – worth fighting for? When is it time to court? When is it time to kick in some effort, be John Cusaak and hold the stereo outside her bedroom window? Be Scarlett O’Hara, and track down your Rhett Butler? (I don’t care what he said, you know he gave more than a damn). Be Johnny Cash, and keep asking till she says yes? At least in the movies, there’s something a little endearing about the person that doesn’t take no for an answer. (That sentiment does not apply in the bedroom, FYI.) There’s something a little endearing about someone that cares so much for you, they’re willing to not only make an effort, but to truly put themselves out on the line.

So how do you know when they really need space, and when they’re really just asking you to put yourself on the line?

Oh, I’m so Carrie Bradshaw.

Blame it on the Rain, Part II

2006-05-16T13:02:00.000-04:00

I was going to write a post about the rain. The never-ending, energy-draining, mind-numbing, havoc-wreaking rain. The rain that has gone on for at least a week now and is predicted to go on for at least another.

I was going to write about how I can’t seem to think or talk about anything else – and as just about every conversation I’ve had in the past four days has referenced the rain in some way, I’m clearly not the only one. How everywhere I go, I only see weary grey faces, exhausted bodies bracing themselves with their umbrellas flying every which way, hair dripping and pants sopping. How this town, already famous for its, um, unfriendliness, has gotten downright surly.

I was going to write about how it has felt like it was 6pm for about, oh, 120 hours now. How I’ve almost forgotten what sunlight feels like. How I can’t wake up in the morning and I’m ready for bed by 2pm. How, once home for the day or in for the weekend, I can’t make myself leave the house, be it to run errands, do my laundry, buy food, or socialize.

I was going to write about how I’m sick of carrying my umbrella around, and I’m sick of deciding, each morning, which pair of pants I feel like soaking in puddles today. I’m sick of frizzy bad hair days and schlumpy shoes. I’m sick of cars spraying me with water as they past – bastards! – and the T being over-crowded, damp, and dirty.

I was going to write about how bitter I am, that May seems to be a month lost to me. My favorite month, ruined. How I’m bitter that I’m still sleeping in sweatshirts and shivering under my blankets because my roommates feel that it’s simply ridiculous to turn the heat on in May (and it is!) even though it’s 59 degrees in my room. How I’m bitter that I survived the long, cold, wet winter with a minimum of complaints, only to be teased with a scant few beautiful, sunshiny days…and then to have my hopes and dreams of a lovely spring crushed by weeks and weeks of torrential downpours.

I was going to write about how, this time last year, I was in India, where it hadn’t rained for at least four months. And, yep, I complained…I complained about the 110 degree heat, heat that knocked you on your ass from at least 10am till 4pm every day, leaving you exhausted, dehydrated (no matter how much water you drank), dripping with sweat and unable to leave your bed or the fan blowing on you (at least until the electricity went out). I longed for rain clouds and rain puddles, for cool water falling on my face and a respite from the endless sun and heat. Oh, I had no idea how good I had it.

I was going to write about how I want to leave, how I can think of nothing but leaving. How I am longing, longing, to be somewhere there is sun, and flowers, and smiling people. How I am cursing my choice to move to New England - New England! - when I could have moved anywhere I wanted. Why didn't I pick California? Or DC? Or, you know, India? Who cares that I moved to a city with culture and restaurants and vitality and friends and energy and life? I'm not enjoying any of it. All I'm doing is sitting in my cold, over-priced apartment cursing the rain. I could do that for a lot less money almost anywhere else.

I was going to write about all of this, primarily because I cannot think of anything else.

But then, this morning, Brian McGrory did it for me.

At least I know I'm not the only one.

Blame it on the Rain

2006-05-14T18:08:00.000-04:00

As an update to my last post, this has apparently been the weekend for gaining sympathy for criminals of various ilk...I (finally) watched Capote yesterday, and I read Joyce Carol Oate's Zombie today, an incredibly disturbing book written in the voice of a serial rapist/killer. Nothing like a dark, depressing, rainy weekend for cuddling up with some books & movies about psychopaths.

Capote, by the by, was brilliant, in case you're the other person on the face of the planet who hasn't yet seen it. I was rooting for Heath Ledger at the Oscars, but in the first 30 seconds of watching this movie, it became clear to me that Phillip Seymour Hoffman's win was well-deserved. I also thought the man playing Perry Smith - the death-row murderer Capote befriends and betrays for his novel In Cold Blood - gave an exceptional performance.

Zombie was less brilliant, but about ten times more disturbing. I'm not quite sure why I picked this weekend to read it...it's been sitting on my shelf for about two years now (picked it up with a dozen or two other books at a garage sale or library sale or something sometime back), and I didn't even know what it was about till I opened it up last night. When it rains, it pours, I suppose. (In keeping with this weekend's theme of rain, rain & more rain.) The book traces the thoughts of a serial killer over a several month period, setting you voyeuristically on his shoulder as he abducts, rapes, attempts to lobotomize, and eventually kills a series of young black men. The man's name is Quentin, and the novel is written in a style incredibly reminiscent of the Benjy section of The Sound & The Fury....I'm trying to decide if that is purposeful or coincidental. (And this highlights the main difference that not being in college makes in my life...in college I would have researched that idea and written a paper on it. Now, I think about it absentmindedly for a moment and put up a line on my blog about it.) Anyway, I'm not going to go so far as to say I enjoyed the book, or that I thought the writing was all that great, but it was definitely food for thought.

On an entirely unrelated note, I wanted to recount an odd encounter I had at a party this Friday. I met an incredibly attractive man that, in a rare occurrence, became even more attractive the more he talked. Very smart, very witty, very beautiful. (Also very taken, which didn't concern me a whole lot, as I'm currently considering myself sort-of-kind-of-not-really-on-the-market at the moment anyway - yes that is a category! In other words, this felt like a very harmless, non-action-provoking flirtation.)

And then he stood up and walked across the room. Turns out, the man is bowlegged...or has a leg or hip injury...or something. Whatever it is, he had a very unusual gait, one that would not normally be considered sexy.

But oh, was it ever. Every time the man walked across the room that night, ostensibly awkward but with no sign of it on his face, I sort of wanted to jump him. Which came, frankly, as a bit of a surprise to me every time.

I think it's a little problematic that I was surprised by my own reaction to this situation. I don't think it's a good thing to automatically assume a disability is a turn-off, to assume that someone with a disability will have a harder time with the ladies (or the gents) because of it....but let's face it, clearly that is exactly the assumption I had. A man with a limp will not equal attractive, right? We pity people with "abnormal" physical features, we don't want to sleep with them. So go this guy, for challenging my assumptions without even knowing he was doing it. Also, go this guy for being hot. Well done.

Just re-read this and realized I have absolutely no connecting theme whatsoever. (I swear I am not trying to draw a connection between serial killers and the disabled, by the way.)

Whatever. Connecting themes are over-rated. Blame it on the rain.

Vengeance is Mine, Sayeth the Lord

2006-05-11T22:42:00.000-04:00

I'm not at all religious, but that is one verse that, to me, rings true.

The band manager whose actions led to the nightclub fire in Providence, Rhode Island a few years back -- killing 100 people -- was sentenced yesterday to four years in prison. The man, who has admitted to setting off a pyrotechnics display that caused the fire, has also said he had no idea the fireworks would start a fire, or that they fire would spread so quickly, or that there wouldn't be enough exits in the event of a fire. He has apologized repeatedly and seems to feel pretty intense anguish and regret over the incident. He was negligent, clearly, and acted without thinking, obviously - but it also seems clear that there was no ill intent in his actions. This was an accident.

What has been amazing to me about this case is the reaction of the families. 100 people died. 100 families lost loved ones. I know the pain, the sense of loss, the sense of robbery, the feeling of injustice at these needless, preventable deaths must be incredibly intense for every person affected. I'm sure that their grief is deep and real.

But what person who has lost a family member in a particularly tragic manner -- be it the mother who lost her second son to violence in Boston this past week, the family that lost their 26-year old daughter to a repeat drunken driver, or, as in this case, families that lost their loved ones due to the negligence and stupidity (but not malice) of one man -- does not feel this way? Who would not feel anger and sadness?

Yet -- at least from the quotes in the media, which, granted, may well be skewed -- the families in this case seem to have taken it to a whole other level. Many got on the stand and "described a grief so intense they could not get out of bed, and said they looked forward to nothing but reunited in death." One particularly vitriolic (and clearly distraught) woman yelled to the defendant's mother, ''What do you think of your son now?", going on to claim she felt satisfied that the man's parents would now have to suffer as she had suffered for the loss of her daughter. The reactions, almost across the board, were hateful and rage-filled. They were looking for vengeance, not justice.

Contrast this with the reactions of most of the families after Moussaoui was sentenced last week to life in prison instead of the death penalty. There was general calm, even relief that they would be spared years of appeals. There was some anger, sure, but most of the families seemed to feel as though justice was served. The jurors on that case demonstrated that despite the intense emotions surrounding 9/11, it was possible to reach a decision based not on a desire for revenge, but on a desire for what was just. That was a fine day for our criminal justice system.

To me, this case in Rhode Island speaks to the heart of what we believe our justice system is for. Is it to punish or protect? Do we send people to jail or put them to death to prevent future crimes or deter potential criminals? Or is it to exact some sort of punishment, some sort of retribution for wrong-doing? Is it about taking an eye for an eye, or is it about ensuring that we all can see?

Probably a little of both. Someone who intentionally commits a horrendous crime probably ought to be punished. And we need a way to deter people from committing actions that could harm others -- like driving drunk -- whether the intent is to harm or not.

Yet in this case, four years seems like a long sentence. Whatever punishment this man deserves, surely the guilt he will carry with him for the rest of his life will suffice. Is putting him in jail going to deter him from starting fires in nightclubs again? Well, possibly, but it seems pretty clear this man is not otherwise a menace to society. We are not any safer by putting him in jail. And I highly doubt that if this man were to be given a lighter sentence -- community service, for example -- that other band managers would feel they could now "get away" with being negligent with their safety checks. Society gains nothing by putting this man in jail, except for satisfying society's apparent need for retribution.

There is a reason we don't allow victims and their families to decide the fate of those who have wronged them. The human need for vengeance is strong, but justice has nothing, nothing to do with vengeance.

Who Talks About AIDS Anymore?

2006-05-09T20:03:00.000-04:00

The latest Newsweek has a huge special report on the AIDS Epidemic: "AIDS at 25." It's filled with stories on the history of the disease and the newest treatments, the world-wide epidemic and profiles of people with HIV. It's timely, I suppose, what with the anniversary of the first documented cases of AIDS in being twenty-five years (1981) this year.

Yet while I was reading it, all I could think was, "Who talks about AIDS anymore?"

Seriously. When was the last time you went to an AIDS benefit or saw a showing of the AIDS quilt? What was the last groundbreaking new play or movie or novel or song about the AIDS epidemic? When was the last time you wore a red ribbon?

AIDS was the epidemic of the 1990's. AIDS was Rent and Angels in America. It was the Quilt on the National Mall and every star wearing red ribbons at the Oscars. It was Magic Johnson and Ryan White.

In 2006? We have not yet found a cure, but many people diagnosed as HIV-positive are going on to live long lives, thanks to the various "AIDS cocktails" on the market. The spread of AIDS has slowed, thanks in no small part to the increase in condom usage. AIDS isn't the national pandemic, the great tragedy, that it was in the 1980's and 1990's...at least not in this country.

So we don't talk about it as much any more. Pardon the phraseology, but as diseases go, AIDS isn't so sexy any more. (It's been surpassed by the yellow-armbanded prostate cancer and the pink-ribboned breast cancer, among others). There aren't as many rallies and protests. There isn't as much fundraising and celebrity campaigning. Can you name one celebrity today closely associated with the AIDS movements? Elizabeth Taylor doesn't count! Today's celebrities have moved on to poverty (Bono) and politics (Clooney, Affleck, Goldbergh, Stone...oh, take your pick. They're all against Bush these days).

I'm not saying AIDS has been solved or that it isn't a national tragedy -- with more than 25 million living with HIV in Africa, not to mention over 8 million in Asia and over a million here in the United States, it's clear not only that the problem is huge, but growing. But we don't treat it as such any more. Most of us worry more about getting bird flu than HIV. If we are religious about using condoms, it probably has more to do with being worried about getting pregnant or catching some unnamed STD than it does about catching AIDS specifically...or it's simply because, as children of the 80's and 90's, we were socialized to believe that having sex, unless you're married or something, means using a condom, no questions asked. Regardless, AIDS does not present the major fear or motivation that it once did, at least not to us sheltered white social liberals.

Slowly but surely, AIDS is changing from a "gay" disease to a "black" disease. We no longer assume that someone with AIDS is gay, and while AIDS is still and may forever be associated in many ways with the gay community, fact is, this isn't a disease contained within any one community any more. (Besides, it stopped being PC to write AIDS off as a gay disease somewhere around 1996).

That hasn't stopped us from 'othering' the AIDS virus, however. But now, instead of being that disease that happens to gay people, it's that disease that happens to black people. Specifically, black people in Africa, that far away hotbed of war, poverty, and disease, filled with people we don't know and don't understand. More people are becoming infected with HIV every single day in Africa than we could ever imagine -- there are areas of Africa where a full third of the population is HIV+, and that number is growing. Yet it's not something we talk about. Aside from a few news articles now and again, it merits very little attention in the media. (Even the Newsweek cover story focused more on Americans living with HIV than the 25+ million Africans who have it.) It is, after all, something that is happening "over there." It's not our disease anymore.

The face of AIDS may have changed in the past 25 years, but not its effect -- apparently, AIDS is still the way our society gets to write off populations of people we don't want to care about ...gay men, intravenous drug users, promiscuous women, urban poor...and now whole Third World countries.

Pick Me! Pick Me!

2006-05-05T14:26:00.000-04:00

I have a confession to make. I am a Craigslist addict.

(Oh, don't scoff. You know you browse it, too. What's your scene? Missed Connections? Free furniture? Erotic services?)

Worst of all, I am absolutely addicted to reading the "Men Seeking Women" ads. (Yeah, okay, and when I'm really bored the Women Seeking Men and the Women Seeking Women and sometimes, for kicks, Misc Romance. Never the Men Seeking Men ads, though….far too many unwanted, er, crotch shots to sort through. Well, wanted by someone, I'm sure….but not by me.)

I'm not even looking for a date, per se. Ok, sure, occasionally I will see some witty, well-crafted posting – likely including a reference to Hemingway or Kundera or some other of my favorite authors, full of slightly self-mocking humor, and, of course, with perfect grammar -- and think, for about two hours, that I've found my soul mate. (I don’t even believe in soul mates, but that’s another discussion). A few times, allowing hope to triumph over experience yet again, I've sent out a reply and gone on a date. (Abject failures, all. So it goes.) But that's beside the point…because while I have gone out on Craigslist dates (I'm not too proud; I'll admit it!), I don’t read the boards in hopes of finding one.

No, see, I am just fascinated by these postings. It's like watching a car wreck – they're tragic, they're bloody, they tear your heartstrings. You know you shouldn't look but you just can't take your eyes away.

I'm fascinated by the way people choose to present themselves. By the atrocious spelling and terrible, awful, grainy, is-that-really-your-best-picture digital camera photos. By the cocky posts and by the desperate ones…the "I'm the hottest man around, no seriously, I never have any problems picking up girls I'm just bored and you'd better be hot because I am did I mention that?" posts and the "are there any smart, cute girls on here? Any? Will I die alone?" posts.

I'm fascinated by the way that everyone's worst qualities eventually manifest in their posts. "I'm a really nice guy and I like everyone. Please be smart and funny and oh please just don't be fat. I'm not trying to be mean I just don't like fat chicks." (Because I'm sure all the smart, funny, not-fat chicks are so attracted to you now.)

I’m fascinated by the number of people that think an entirely generic, three-line ad – something along the lines of “I’m a SWM, 26, funny, nice, normal, attractive guy. I like going to bars and watching red sox games. Looking for a cute, slim/athletic girl that likes to have fun” – is going to get them a response. (And I’m being generous with my description…many of them say even less than that.)

I'm fascinated by the very repetitiveness of the boards. You read these often enough – and, oh, I do – and you begin to see patterns. Serial posters and copy-cat posters, yes, but you can even see patterns emerge among the 'first time posting' crowd. Everyone, it turns out, is sick of the bar scene. Everyone likes to go out sometimes but also likes to stay in. Everyone 'can't believe they're online looking for a date.' (Oh, please, get over it. Seriously, that might have worked back in 1995, but these days? C'mon.) Everyone, it seems, wants a 'partner in crime.' (Who knows how high the crime rate would go if all these people found each other?)

And every now and then, of course, you get an interesting ad. Those are fascinating, too. Something catchy and clever. Something funny. Something a little original. There’s a guy right now doing a running countdown of postings…he’s putting up one per day for the next year, or until he finds his true love. I can’t decide whether I feel bad for him or whether I want to ask him out. (He’s 54, so I’m probably not actually going to email him. But conceptually, I find his unassuming, what-the-hell approach intriguing.)

Whenever I read these boards a little too often, however, I start to do some math. I look around me – in the elevator, on the street, at bars – and I think, surely I have read postings written by people in this room. This guy I’m chatting with – he is the one who posted that really sketchy “Generou$ Guy Looking to hang out with a $weet $exy College $tudent” ad this morning. This girl over there – she wrote one of those really asinine posts about just LOVING THE RED SOX!!!!!! and LOOKING FOR A GOOD MAN WHO WON’T PLAY GAMES!!!!! I am surrounded, absolutely surrounded, by the people who have written the postings I mock all day long.

The anonymity of the internet is a strange, strange thing.

Today I Paid Ten Dollars for an Umbrella

2006-05-02T17:23:00.000-04:00

This is why it so expensive to live in a city. Forget astronomical housing costs. Forget a tight, tight job market that allows employers to pay us far less than a) we deserve and b) we can afford. Forget, even, the fact that I’ve come to view $4 for a beer as a bargain. (Oh! Quarter Beers. Oh! $1 Well Drinks at the Feve. Oh! $1 PBR’s any-night-o-the-week.)

It’s because “convenience” stores like CVS can get away with charging $10 for an umbrella. A flimsy, useless umbrella that will either fly up with the first strong gust of wind or (more likely), I will misplace, as I have misplaced, within two weeks of purchase, every other umbrella I’ve ever bought.

And I paid it. How could I not? I was soaking wet and it’s expected to rain for days. And it’s not like I can easily make a trip to Target, or, hell, Walmart (a pox upon thee…though I’m beginning to understand the allure of, among other things, your cheap umbrellas.) Nope, I’m stuck with CVS and its $10 umbrellas.

Oh, I even shopped around. At the CVS in Jamaica Plain this morning, they wanted $15. I was stubborn. I stuck it out. I refused, on principle, to drop $15 on an umbrella, even if it was raining so hard I could barely see five feet in front of me and my hair was already a frizzy, sopping mess.

By the afternoon, on my lunch hour, the price had apparently dropped. (The rain, also, had let up a bit. Coincidence? I think not.) I gave in. Ten dollars! Ten dollars.

Slowly but surely, I’m being priced right out of the city. The one dollar cans of soda, dollar-seventy subway rides (thanks, MBTA!) and ten dollar umbrellas are adding up. A few more rainy weeks (and a few more ten-dollar-replacement-umbrellas), and I’m moving to the suburbs.

Just kidding.

On Feeling Oh-So-Old at 24

2006-05-01T23:38:00.000-04:00

I turn 24 tomorrow. Actually, in about one hour.

(That’s not a “don’t you want to wish me Happy Birthday?” plea. I mean, you know, don’t you? But seriously, it’s just something I need to establish for the premise of this post).

I spoke with my mother tonight. She told me that 25 years ago – when she, too, was 24 – she thought she might be pregnant. It turned out to be a false alarm…or, rather, a false hope. As it turns out, my mother was hoping to be pregnant. (Three months later, approximately nine months before I was born, she would be).

Hoping to be pregnant. Trying. It’s a stage of life I still can’t even begin to imagine – and yet at 24, she was the last of her friends not to have a child. She’d been married for almost five years, out of college for three, settled into a permanent job, with a car (station wagon!) and a home (a fine trailer located on prime trailer park real estate in Allegany, NY – yes, I can proudly reclaim the name “trailer trash” as my own….). She was ready.

I’m pretty sure that if any of my friends were to have a child in the near future, I would be a little embarrassed for them. Supportive? Sure. Ready to play the doting aunt? Of course. But still – I’m sure the thought would cross my mind….how did you let that happen? I can’t imagine a situation where congratulations would be the first thing I would think to say.

It was hard enough for me when I realized, as I turned 20, that when my mother hit that milestone, she was engaged to be married within a few months. At age 20, I hadn’t yet found someone I could stay with for longer than six months (oops….four years later, still haven’t crossed that one), let alone someone I would want to stay with for the rest of my life. But if I thought it was scary, at 20, to envision myself tied down to another adult for all eternity, I had no idea how terrifying it would be to think of myself at 24, ready to be given the life-long responsibility of taking care of another human, a child, who could not care for themselves. To truly be responsible for not just my life, but his or hers as well.

At 24, I’m feeling ancient. Tied down by credit card debt and health insurance, vacation days and a lease. Ready for bed by 11pm. Disarmingly, disquietingly stable.

Yet look how young I am! I move from city to city, apartment to apartment, job to job, even country to country, all with (relative) ease. I go out, I flirt, I date as I feel like – frequently or infrequently, many at once, one at a time, or none at all. Whatever I want. My life, my time, my schedule…as much as I may consider myself constrained by the limitations a steady job and the rest of reality imposes, I really am very free to come and go as I feel. My life is mine and mine alone.

My mother – and many women of her generation – experienced none of this. Nor did she seem to want to. I know, at least, that she doesn’t regret any of the choices she made. What is it about me, about my generation, that we have decided, on the whole, that we do want all this? That marriage and a child before the age of thirty (at a bare minimum) is a state of affairs to be confused by…if not embarrassed by. That while we may dramatically bemoan our antiquity at 24, we really have chosen the youngest path we can find…and we know it?

And more importantly….is this a good thing, or a bad thing? When we reach my mother’s age, will we be able to say that we don’t regret any of the choices we made? That these years of extended youth were worth it, were the way life should be lived?

Wisdom of the Day

2006-04-27T14:38:00.000-04:00

“If I had it my way, we’d all be eatin’ milky ways and grape slushies… total harmony. That’s why I’ve come to save the galaxy… the whole galaxy!!!!!!”

-Optimistic and rather ambitious homeless man on the corner of Boylston and Arlington this morning
(Thank you, Mark, for sending this my way).

I would personally amend that to cherry-coke slushies, but the sentiment is the same...

Opposites Day?

2006-04-25T22:37:00.000-04:00

Something seems to have gone seriously wrong in Washington in the past few days. Liberals sounding like hard-line conservatives, and (perhaps even more disturbingly) Republicans sounding like they’ve actually heard of concepts like compassion towards society’s less fortunate. When it comes to the hotly debated topic of immigration reform, they're all going a little bit nuts. Maybe it’s just the spring air, or maybe they’re all playing a big joke on us: Surprise! It’s Opposites Day.

To demonstrate, let’s play a little game of “Guess Who Said That?”

Your choices:
- Dubya, our beloved Commander in Chief, or
- Sen. Hillary Clinton (normally my undisputed pick for the ’08 Presidential Campaign, though she’ll eventually lose that status if she keeps acting like this….)

Ok, here goes (no cheating by clicking the links before you've made your guess!):

A) "One thing we cannot lose sight of is that we're talking about human beings, decent human beings, that need to be treated with respect."

B) “A wall [along the US-Mexican Border] in certain areas would be appropriate.”

C) “Massive deportation of the people here is unrealistic. It’s just not going to work.”

Ready for this? Statements A & C – the two statements with which I agree whole-heartedly – are from our very own President. Statement B, about the wall? That’d be Hillary “what the heck is she thinking?” Clinton.

A wall, Hillary? Seriously?

You know something crazy is going on in Washington when I actually find myself agreeing with Bush on something.

Sleeping with the Enemy?

2006-04-24T21:52:00.000-04:00

The other day I was reading an article in Time about the making of United 93, the new 9-11 movie about the passengers who tried to take over their hijacked plane, eventually causing it to crash in the fields of Pennsylvania and probably saving the lives of thousands at the plane’s real target on Pennsylvania Ave. (Looks fascinating and inspiring, by the way).

I was hit hard by a couple of photos they ran of the presumed hijackers on the plane. (The article was showing how the movie’s producers tried to cast people with similar looks and backgrounds to the real-life hijackers and heroes).

They were so young.

I don’t know why, but up until now, I’ve sort of always assumed that all the hijackers looked like Zacarias Moussaoui or Ramzi Yousef…big, bearded, a deranged look in their eye, obvious outsiders. Scary, imposing. In other words, clearly monsters.

They weren’t. Okay, sure, some of them do seem to have a bit of a deranged look in their eyes (at least in the FBI posters), but most of them look incredibly normal. The type of people I might pass every day and never take much notice of. They wore khakis and talked on cell phones. Some of them were frankly quite attractive. I might have flirted with them at a bar. I might have joked with them in class.

I realize my initial assumption about appearances was a little naïve, a little misguided, and probably more than a little racist. (Let’s be honest here about our own hidden prejudices). I realize that there is no logical reason for me to think that a man that looks like Moussaoui or Yousef is any more likely to commit atrocities than a man who looks like I might find him at my local watering hole. I know you don’t have to look like a monster to be one. But I thought it anyway. Did you?

Take a look at these pictures for second.

Doesn’t he look like he could be a lot of fun to hang out with? A big joker with lots of friends?

Or this one? Doesn’t he look like the type of guy you’d find in some trendy Central Square bar? Getting his MBA at Harvard, about to become some corporate big shot?

This is the one that really got me. Those eyes have been burning into me for days. Can he possibly be older than 18? Don’t you want to hug him, for a just a second, and promise him that life really does get better? That 18 is really a pretty shitty age, and that nothing is as bad as it seems? I know I do.

I’m not trying to humanize these guys or suggest for a second that they were anything but the murderers and terrorists they clearly were.

But I can’t help for wonder, just for a moment – were these men anything more than scared little boys, caught up in a bit of religious fervor and a course of events way, way bigger than them, lured in by the promise of a seat in heaven and a thousand virgins? Social outcasts who never learned to make friends, sucked in by an ideology that would make them for once in their lives feel important?

And if we can’t count on the next batch of terrorists (or, for that matter, the next batch of Columbine imitators) to be scary or ugly, to have huge dark beards and wear turbans, to have a look in their eye that gives away their murderous intentions, then how do we recognize them? How do we reach them before it’s too late?

Blogs are the New Black

2006-04-19T21:13:00.000-04:00

Blogging, apparently, has become the thing to do. Like, this week. Okay, so they’ve supposedly been big for years, but I’ve never really been all that trendy. Last week, I broke down (and broke my wallet) and bought an iPod. This week, I’m tackling the blog. Baby steps, folks. Baby steps.

But seriously - blogs, suddenly, are popping up out of the woodwork, poking their little heads up in every facet of my life. Not that I’m complaining – the more ways I can find to fill up the some of the more mind-numbing hours of my work day, the better. I’m starting to feel like I’ve been invited to join a secret society. Did everyone always have a blog and I didn’t know it? Am I only just paying attention now, or are they really the trend-of-the-month?

I noted to a friend the other day that I think blogs are going to be our generation’s way of connecting writers together.

Whenever I picture my absolutely-perfect-I-won-the-lottery-money-is-no-object-I-get-to-do-whatever-the-hell-I-want life, it always looks a little like Hemingway’s description of the Parisian expat life in A Moveable Feast. Writing all day in cafes, random, lazy conversations and high-brow gossiping with other high-minded intellectuals, plenty of coffee, even more wine, summer drives with Fitzgerald and wild parties with Gertrude Stein. Don’t get me wrong – I’m no Hemingway (my proclivity for multi-claused sentences and frequent parentheticals and interjections being only one of the many, many giveaways). That’s where the lottery-winning part comes in….ol’ Hem may have had to sweat the money (but oh the romance of the life of the poor artist), yet he also seems to have been able to make his rent off his writing. I’m not going to count on that one just yet.

But to get back to my point – and, I swear, there is one. What I’ve always wanted is to be part of a community of writers – to get to spend my days writing and talking about writing (or at least ideas to write about) with other writers and thinkers. Hemingway had his circle of expats – Fitzgerald, Pound, Stein, Joyce. Romantic-era writers like Keats and Shelley corresponded prolifically through letters. Kerouac, Ginsberg, Cassady and other Beats all did their mad beat thing San Francisco. And our generation, it seems, has blogs.

Maybe some day, enterprising young English PhD students searching in vain for a half-way original dissertation topic will try to find knowledge – or at least a thesis – in the blogosphere. Maybe the post-post-modernists will embrace blogging as the newest way to reconstruct meaning (deconstruction being oh so passé). Maybe undergrads looking to write biographical- interpretations of the great literary works of this era will look to blog posts instead of letters and memoirs to find understanding.

And maybe all the fellow bloggers that seem to be appearing in my life these days are my community. If so, let the wine and coffee flow.

May You Run and Not Grow Weary

2006-04-18T21:44:00.000-04:00

May you run and not grow weary.
Walk…and not faint.
Isaiah 40:31

(Sign posted on a Copley Square church before the finish line of the Boston Marathon)

I'm not much of a sports fan. About the only thing that will get me to a baseball game is the promise of massive beers and peanuts delivered to me at my seat and getting to sing a slightly slurred "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" during the 7 th inning stretch. And I'm certainly not much of a runner – I generally ascribe to the view that anyone who runs for any reason beyond being chased by a wild boar or something is a little loopy. (Extending that argument to its logical conclusion, anyone that does it for 26.2 miles is certifiable).

All of that noted, however, I have to say – watching the Boston Marathon yesterday was one of the most enjoyable outings – sporting or otherwise – that I've had in awhile. (At least among the outings that didn't include heavy flirtation or heavy drinking). Thousands of Bostonians lining the street to cheer on thousands of virtual strangers from all over the world is quite the sight, especially in a city with a reputation for unfriendliness towards "outsiders" (read: non-lifelong Bostonians) . Handmade signs, free kisses to runners, kids handing out glasses of waters, runners in crazy costumes, runners for a cause – be it personal, political, charity, or something else altogether. Many runners had their names printed on their jersey or written on their arms, prompting the cheering fans, me among them, to urge them on by name. "Way to go, Dave!" "Keep it up, Suzy Q." "Alright, Mark!" Each time I got to cheer a runner on by name, I felt as though I – in some teeny, tiny, miniscule way – was helping them to achieve their goal of finishing. I felt like I was a part of their effort. Call me mushy and sentimental, but it felt really, really nice to be a part of a community, if only for one afternoon.

There are, certainly, many more noteworthy and important things a person can do beyond running a marathon. On paper, I find the accomplishments and daily toiling of social workers, teachers, firefighters, and the myriads of others who give selflessly of their time and energy to be a lot more inspiring than someone who strapped up their shoes and pounded the pavement for an afternoon. On paper. Yet to watch so many people accomplishing personal – and perhaps lifelong – goals, goals I know they trained months for, goals I know must have seemed, at some points in the race, unachievable…to watch that unfold before you for hours is to be inspired.

I saw men and women in their sixties and seventies run by me at the 24 mile mark, showing few signs of fatigue. (And many more in their twenties, thirties, and beyond showing many signs of fatigue, but pushing forward anyway.) I saw a mother & son team – the back of his shirt reading "She's my hero" and pointing to her. I saw the now-famous Team Hoyt, the father pushing the son in his wheelchair for 26.2 miles to finish their 25th – that's right, 25th – Boston Marathon.

None of this inspired me to want to run. No, definitely not. If anything, watching the expressions of pure pain and exhaustion on the faces of the thousands of runners I saw yesterday only reinforced my notion that running is not the pursuit for me. But it did teach me a thing or two about determination. About the will to accomplish a goal, trumping every other physical and mental urge to give up, to lie down, to rest.

Yep, this is a certifiably cheesy post. No doubt about it. But this is one cheesy writer you can count as a fan of the Boston Marathon.

Jama Masjid

2006-04-17T22:21:00.000-04:00

Two bombs went off during the evening prayers in one of the largest mosques in Delhi last Friday. This is not, perhaps, the most cheerful way to start off a new blog, but it's an event I've been thinking about a lot in the past few days.

I visited the Jama Masjid on my second full day in India. Still jet-lagged and weary from my 54 hours in transit, dragged along by a hired tour guide who answered "Yes, Ma'am" to every single question I asked, and entirely overwhelmed by my surroundings, I was more intimidated and frustrated by my trip to the mosque than anything else. It's a beautiful old mosque, sure, I wouldn't put it down as a highlight of my trip. Truth be told, there is little love lost between the Jama Masjid and I.

The Jama Masjid is located in the midst of a bustling, crowded marketplace in Old Delhi, the Muslim Quarter of the city. Close to the famous Red Fort, it is often added to tourist trips to the area as a prime example of Mughal-era mosques. I had already visited the Red Fort that day, and I was under the impression that my driver and tour guide was taking me back to the car. Instead, as we approached the parking lot, our cycle-rickshaw turned off in the opposite direction, straight into the teeming masses of people streaming through the market place streets, all seemingly intent on staring at me, shouting at me, and, of course, trying to sell something to me. Confused and on my guard - having been warned that if I gave one of these tour guides an inch he would have me exchanging all my money for a bag of worthless 'gems' before I could say namaste - I began to semi-politely question where we were headed. Having never heard of the Jama Masjid, I wasn't able to make much sense of his reply. I made certain he knew I wasn't interested in seeing any of his friend's carpet shops, and reluctantly decided to sit back for the ride and see where we were headed.

We stopped in front of the mosque - a large, imposing structure with a giant staircase leading up to the top - and I surmised that this was our destination. My tourguide led me to the top, where I was informed by the random Indian at the door that, while entrance to the mosque was free, it would cost me 200 rupees (approximately $5, the same price as a night's stay in a decent hostel) to bring my camera inside. I was a bit skeptical and put up a fight - the tourbook mentioned nothing of a 'camera fee,' and the man collecting the 'fee' wasn't exactly official-looking. My tourguide and the six men who were suddenly crowded around me (whenever there is a verbal altercation in India, you can be sure that at least five random men will join in -- especially when there's a white female involved!) all assured me that this was legit, and that if I didn't want to pay the fee, I could certainly leave my nice, fancy camera in the 'camera holding area' and go in without it.

Right.

After much haggling and arguing, the men admitted they were just trying to scam me, and let me in. Okay, right, maybe not. Actually, I complained timidly for a few minutes and finally just forked over the 200 rupees(which I can assure you is an astronomical price; it would be like paying $20 to get to see Boston's Trinity Church) sure I was being scammed but seeing no way of getting around it. It was only my second day in India; I was still getting my sea legs, after all.

I entered the mosque, a little disgruntled and a little grumpy. It was, as I've said, beautiful, with a wide open courtyard, intricate red detailing throughout, and large open windows that gave me a fantastic view over the insanities of the market place below. I had little appreciation for any of it, however, because a few minutes after I entered, I realized my watch was missing. Not only had they scammed me for 200 rupees, they had made off with my watch as well. (It's a classic trick, of course: get me distracted, crowd around me, and then slip off my watch while I'm not paying attention.)

My visit to the Jama Masjid was, as I've said, not a highlight of my trip. Yet all the same, it rips my heart out to hear of these bombings (a month or so ago, a series of bombs went off in Varanasi; last October in Delhi marketplaces) occurring in places I had walked, in a country I've come to think of as a second home. It's like they blew off bombs in my own backyard. I can think of nothing but the people I came to know -- most incredibly kind and generous, funny, open, friendly; some scheming and thieving, but clever bastards, none the less -- and wonder if they are safe. Yes, even the ones that made off with my watch.

When terrorism came to America in the form of planes crashing into the World Trade Center, it suddenly woke us all up. We called neighbors who had cousins who were visiting New York and maybe could have been in Manhattan at the time; we called friends who had family who lived somewhere on Long Island. We suddenly were all inter-connected. We suddenly were all part of a greater community. Even if we were Southern rednecks or Mid-Western soccer moms in our normal lives, we were all New Yorkers that day.

When the bombs go off in Baghdad (as they seem to do daily) or Tel Aviv (as they did today and likely will again some tomorrow hence), we give it barely a passing thought. Unless we happen to know someone visiting Israel that week, or have a family member in the service, these daily murders, these acts of hate, don't affect our day to day life in the slightest.

I don't know how we re-create the sense of global community we had after 9/11 after every bombing...or, if we even should. Most people and most governments aren't motivated to action until we are personally affected. I know I'm not. Yet short of sending every person to visit every country in the world, I don't know how we find that motivation for action.

I don't know how to make myself feel for the victims in Iraq or Israel or Uzbekistan or Darfur or wherever the latest crisis is as much as I felt for the victims of 9/11...or the victims in Delhi and Varanasi. When the bombs went off at the Jama Masjid on Friday, I was, for a moment, an Indian. I don't know how to make myself, for a moment, Israeli. I worry that until I learn - until we all learn - bombings like these are not going to end.

Shoe Shopping

2006-04-13T22:09:00.000-04:00

I like to try on ideas the way I try on shoes. This one's sexy, but could I walk in it for miles? When and where will the blisters develop? This one's practical and sturdy, sure -- but is it really my style? This one is as comfortable as my favorite pair of sneakers. It's the easiest thing to throw on when I'm in a hurry...but that doesn't mean it's always the most appropriate for the occasion. I like to play with ideas, break them in, see where they take me. I can't tell how they'll fit until I've worn them in for awhile.

That's pretty much what this is blog is about. Writing down the ideas constantly running through my head, getting them down on paper, seeing what they mean and where they lead. No idea, in my mind, is too big or too small, too banal or too sacrosanct, to get a little critical examination. No cow too sacred to be milked. I like to question assumptions and pick apart trains of -- often faulty -- logic. Speak truth to power, or at least ask it a few pointed questions.

Lately I've been thinking a lot about immigration, gender roles in dating, Massachusetts' new health care plan, our definitions of 'sanity' and 'normal', the uses and abuses of casual sex, the isolating effects of iPods and cellphones, and whether stability is a good thing or a bad thing. I imagine those will all work themselves into future blog posts in one way or another.

I also like to write, and I like the idea of using the blog to get a little exercise. My dirty little secret: regardless of what it may say on my resume or paycheck, I really think of myself as a writer. I obsess over rhythm, pacing, word choice, flow; I'm incredibly critical when it comes to grammar. I can be more passionate about the process of writing than subject matter or the final product.

I've never had much luck with fiction, though, and while I spend most of my working life churning out bullshit in all its various forms-- intriguing, well-crafted, highly effective bullshit, to be sure, but bullshit none the less -- it isn't the sort of writing that really speaks to my soul. The market for the modern persuasive or contemplative essay may be limited at best these days, but luckily for me, Blogger seems to give out space for these new-fangled blog-things for free.

Writing is my own personal way of performing -- look at the cool tricks I can do with semi-colons! -- and I feel the constant need for the audience, or at least the illusion of one. Every journal I've ever tried to keep has failed miserably, yet I love typing long, prolific emails. Even if no one reads what I write, the fact that someone might is enough to get my fingers moving on the keyboard. Let's see if it works this time.